MY BRILLIANT CAREER

MILES FRANKLIN

1901







PREFACE


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. I wrote to Miles
Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw her before leaving
Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely twenty-one yet, and has
scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life. She has lived her book,