My Brilliant Career
First edition (1901)
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| Author | Miles Franklin |
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| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | William Blackwood & Sons |
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Publication date
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1901 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 319 pp |
| Followed by | My Career Goes Bung |
My Brilliant Career is a 1901 novel written by Miles Franklin. It is the first of many novels by Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879–1954), one of the major Australian writers of her time. It was written while she was still a teenager, as a romance to amuse her friends. Franklin submitted the manuscript to Henry Lawson who contributed a preface and took it to his own publishers in Edinburgh. The popularity of the novel in Australia and the perceived closeness of many of the characters to her own family and circumstances as small farmers in New South Wales near Goulburn caused Franklin a great deal of distress and led her to withdrawing the novel from publication until after her death.
Shortly after the publication of My Brilliant Career, Franklin wrote a sequel, My Career Goes Bung, which would not be published until 1946.
The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistence level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is sent to live on her grandmother's property, where life is more comfortable. There she meets wealthy young Harold Beecham, who loves her and proposes marriage; convinced of her ugliness and aware of her tomboyish ways, Sybylla is unable to believe that he could really love her. By this time, her father's drinking has gotten the family into debt, and she is sent to work as governess/housekeeper for the family of an almost illiterate neighbour to whom her father owes money. She finds life there unbearable and eventually suffers a physical breakdown which leads to her return to the family home. When Harold Beecham returns to ask Sybylla to marry him, she concludes that she would only make him unhappy and sends him away, determined never to marry. The novel ends with no suggestion that she will ever have the "brilliant career" as a writer that she desires.
A 1979 film version, produced by Margaret Fink and directed by Gillian Armstrong, features Judy Davis and Sam Neill in starring roles as Sybylla and Harry. Sybylla is a young woman with big dreams of becoming a well-known writer. She lives in the outback of Australia with her family struggling with the drought and monetary problems. Her journey to finding herself and making the hardest choices of her life begins when her mother says she can’t afford to keep her and sends Sybylla to her rich grandmother's house where she learns to love. But instead of pursuing love and becoming a rich housewife as expected, Sybylla does not wish to give up her big dreams of becoming a distinguished writer. She chooses a 'brilliant' career over love and getting married, getting a book published in 1901.
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