Description

There’s something wild in this ”picture of a young girl hungering for life and love in the harsh outback plains of New South Wales”. Banned by the author herself until ten years after her death in 1954, this vivid Australian classic was originally published in Edinburgh.

Description

Miles Franklin’s 1901 ground-breaking debut, and an instant sensation. Meet Sybylla Melvyn, the young girl hungering for life and love in outback New South Wales.

‘This is not a romance – I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn – a real yarn. Oh!’

First published in 1901, this Australian classic is the candid tale of the aspirations and frustrations of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry.

Trapped on her parents’ outback farm, Sybylla simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. She longs for a more refined lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing – but most of all to do great things. Suddenly her life is transformed when she is whisked away to live on her grandmother’s gracious property. There Sybylla falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. Soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a ‘brilliant career’.

Description

NOW A CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FILM WITH BAFTA WINNING ACTRESS, JUDY DAVIS ‘A splendidly vivid display . . . its sharply detailed, entirely convincing voice’ THE TIMES ‘An insightful exploration of class, gender and youthful frustration’ ANITA SETHI, GUARDIAN ‘It combines linguistic surprise and inertness in a way possible only to genius’ NEW YORK TIMES First published in 1901, this Australian classic recounts the live of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn. Trapped on her parents’ outback farm, she simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. For Sybylla longs for a more refined, aesthetic lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing, but most of all to do great things. Suddenly her life is transformed. Whisked away to live on her grandmother’s gracious property, she falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. And soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a brilliant career.