199. Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career)
An Australian author — and the 1979 film adaptation of her work — capture Kim and Amy’s fancy this week on the show. Published in 1901 and written when author Miles Franklin was only eighteen years old, My Brilliant Career became an instant classic of Australian literature and still delights readers with its feisty heroine, Sybylla Melvin, and its realistic depiction of Australian life and lingo at the turn of the 20th century. In our discussion of the novel and its film adaptation (starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill) we’ll explain why Franklin’s fear of being a literary one-hit-wonder proved unfounded, and why her name today graces one of Australia’s top annual literary prizes.
Mentioned in this episode:
Miles Franklin
My Brilliant Career film
My Brilliant Career novel
Judy Davis
Sam Neill
Director Gillain Armstrong
Oscar and Lucinda
Charlotte Grey
Blackwood’s publishing house
Up the Country by Brent of Bin Bin
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 128 on Margaret Oliphant
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Bring the Monkey by Miles Franklin
My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin
All That Swagger by Miles Franklin
Miles Franklin: A Short Biography by Jill Roe
Of Foreign Lands and Peoples by Robert Schumann (soundtrack to film)