Miles Franklin

Miles Franklin (1879–1954) was born Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin on her maternal grandmother’s property, Talbingo, near Tumut in NSW. She spent the early part of her life at Brindabella, the family home station in the Monaro region and in 1889 the family moved near Goulburn, NSW. They later moved to Sydney.

After the publication of My Brilliant Career in 1901, Franklin tried a career in nursing, and worked as a housemaid. While cultivating her literary contacts with such writers as Joseph Furphy, Norman Lindsay and Henry Lawson, she was a freelance journalist with the pseudonyms ‘An Old Bachelor’ and ‘Vernacular’. She was involved in the early Australian feminist movement via her friendship with Rose Scott and Vida Goldstein.

Franklin left Australia in 1906 for the USA and undertook secretarial and editorial work for Alice Henry, another Australian, in the National Women’s Trade Union league. She moved to England in 1915 and worked in the Scottish Women’s Hospital at Ostrovo in the Serbian campaigns of 1917–18. She moved permanently back to Sydney in 1932. In her will she bequeathed her estate to establish an annual literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.