26 Facts About Miles Franklin

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin, was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1901.

Miles Franklin 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' organisations.

Miles Franklin 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.

Miles Franklin's 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.

Miles Franklin was the eldest child of Australian-born parents, John Maurice Franklin and Susannah Margaret Eleanor Franklin, nee Lampe, who was the great-granddaughter of Edward Miles who had arrived with the First Fleet in the Scarborough with a seven-year sentence for theft.

Miles Franklin was educated at home until 1889 when she attended Thornford Public.

Miles Franklin's best known novel, My Brilliant Career, tells the story of an irrepressible teenage girl, Sybylla Melvyn, growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales.

In 1906, Miles Franklin moved to the US and undertook secretarial work for Alice Henry, another Australian, at the National Women's Trade Union League in Chicago, and co-edited the league's magazine, Life and Labor.

Miles Franklin's years in the US are reflected in On Dearborn Street, a love story that uses American slang in a manner not dissimilar to the early work of Dashiell Hammett.

Miles Franklin suffered regular bouts of ill health and entered a sanatorium for a period in 1912 In 1915, she travelled to England and worked as a cook and earned some money from journalism.

Miles Franklin served as a cook and later matron's orderly in a 200-bed tent hospital attached to the Serbian army near Lake Ostrovo in Macedonian Greece from July 1917 to February 1918.

From 1919 to 1926 Miles Franklin worked as Secretary with the National Housing and Town Planning Association in London.

Miles Franklin organised a women's international housing convention in 1924.

Miles Franklin resettled in Australia in 1932 after the death of her father in 1931.

Miles Franklin joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 1933 and the Sydney PEN Club in 1935.

Miles Franklin encouraged young writers such as Jean Devanny, Sumner Locke Elliott and Ric Throssell and she supported the new literary journals, Meanjin and Southerly.

Miles Franklin entertained literary figures at her home in Carlton, NSW.

In 1937, Miles Franklin declined appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Miles Franklin's message was centered on free speech and the championing of Australian literature.

Miles Franklin was not a member of any political party, although her diaries reveal an interest in socialism and ASIO did have a file on Miles Franklin during the Cold War.

Stephenson launched the pro-isolationist, anti-war Australia First Movement in late 1941, to which Miles Franklin was vehemently opposed, as evidenced by her diary entries and correspondence at the time - "Reds or pinks or 'rightists' all showed their ignorance" she wrote after attending a AFM meeting, and of Stephenson "I could not have anything to do with his politics".

Miles Franklin was staunchly anti-war and, traumatized by her WWI experiences, very much feared a war on Australian soil at this time.

Miles Franklin died on 19 September 1954, aged 74 and her ashes were scattered in Jounama Creek, Talbingo close to where she was born.

Miles Franklin engaged in a number of literary collaborations throughout her life.

Dever writes that the letters between Dymphna Cusack and Miles Franklin that are published in Yarn Spinners "provide a see-sawing commentary on the delicate art of literary collaboration".

Miles Franklin bequeathed her printed book collection, correspondence and notes as well as the poems of Mary Fullerton.