Miles Franklin was an odd and greatly underappreciated writer. If you read of her at the online encyclopedia, you'll learn that "She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award." Well, we'd never heard of it. But we happened into this book, Some Everyday Folk and Dawn, and we love it. It's not the novel she was famous for, either: that was My Brilliant Career. Here, listen to the opening passage -- The summer sun streamed meltingly down on the asphalted siding of the country railway station and occasioned the usual grumbling from the passengers alighting from the afternoon express. There were only three who effect this narrative -- a huge, red-faced, barrellike figure that might have served to erect as a monument to the overfeeding in vogue in this era; a tall, spare, old fellow with a grizzled beard, who looked as though he had never known a succession of square feeds; and myself, whose physique does not concern this narrative. Well, we love her. We know you will, too.

Author Biography

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin (1879 - 1954) was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936. She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals and writers' organizations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major annual prize for literature about "Australian Life in any of its phases," the Miles Franklin Award. Her impact was further recognised in 2013 with the creation of the Stella Prize, awarded annually for the best work of literature by an Australian woman.