'Someone to tell it too'

 

“Someone to tell it too is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin

 

Born in New South Wales, Australia in October of 1879, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was best known for her worldwide bestselling novel My Brilliant Career – now also a popular Netflix series.

 

Franklin grew up writing, first encouraged by her elementary school teacher Mary Gillespie and then by a local newspaper editor who published a number of her articles during her teenage years.   My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, is a semi-autobiographical retelling of those early writing years, following the life of an irrepressible teenage girl growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales.  

 

Her writing took her first to Britain and then the United States during the first part of the 1900s before she served as a nurse during World War I.  Returning to Australia she continued to find success with her books, including the popular novels All That Swagger and Who Was Joseph Furphy? (in collaboration with Kate Baker).  Both books won Australia’s coveted S.H. Prior Memorial Prize for fiction.

 

Traumatized by her war experiences, she became a staunch anti-war advocate, both cheered and vilified for her views.  Undaunted by those in the latter camp, she noted, “It’s a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people.”