My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Some fading to spine. Sunning to right foredge. Gilded top foredge. Interior and binding are also very good.

Hardcover edition from the Collector's library of Australia's Great Books.

"This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn- a real yarn. Oh! as real, as really real- provided life itself is anything beyond a heartless little chimera- it is as real in its weariness and bitter heartache as the tall gum-trees, among which I first saw the light, are real in their stateliness and substantiality.--p.[1]"

A few months before I left Australia, I got a letter from the Bush, signed "Miles Franklin," saying that the writer had written a novel, but knew nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and advise. Something about the letter, which was written in a strong original hand, attracted me, so I sent for the MS., and one dull afternoon I started to read it. I hadn't read three pages when I saw what you will no doubt see at once - that the story had been written by a girl. And as I went on, I saw that the work was Australian - born of the Bush. I don't know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book - I leave that to girl readers to judge; but the descriptions of Bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me, and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia - the truest I ever read.--Preface / Henry Lawson.