The Diaries of Miles FranklinTo commemorate 50 years since the death of Miles Franklin, this volume of her diaries has been produced in collaboration with the NSW State Library. It isillustrated with photos and drawings of the people and places of whom and of which she writes. |
Common terms and phrases
afternoon Alice Angus & Robertson April Archibald Prize artist asked August Australian literature Australian Writers award Barnard Barnard Eldershaw beautiful Brent Brindabella Bulletin Carlton Clune dear diaries Dobell Dymphna Cusack edition Eldershaw February Fellowship of Australian Fogden George girl gone Grey Henry Lawson Ida Leeson Idriess Jack Franklin January Jean Jill Roe Joseph Furphy journalist June Lampe letter literary living London looked lovely Marjorie Barnard married Mary Gilmore Melbourne Miles Franklin Miles Franklin Award Miss Scott Mitchell Library MITCHELL LIBRARY PX ML MSS morning Mother née never night Norman novel November P.R. Stephensen Penton Pioneers on Parade play poor Prior Memorial Prize pseudonym published September Sir Francis South Wales Stephensen story Susannah Swagger Sydney talk telephone theatre things thought told took trees wife woman women wonder wrote young
Popular passages
Page 206 - I am sick of Australia; compared with Sydney or Melbourne, as far as culture or common sense go, Rochdale is as Athens under Pericles. I have not heard ONE witty remark from an Australian in five and a half years. Dein bin ich,
Page 65 - Dame Commander of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire.
Page xii - It is a vivid and sincere book, certainly the true reflection of a passionate young nature, impatient of the inevitable limitations of the life around her.
Page 109 - Up the Country, 1928; Ten Creeks Run, 1930; and Back to Bool Bool, 1931.
Page xi - Altogether—with the exception, perhaps, of some too emotional passages in middle of novel—and as a vivid yet humorous description of selection and farming life in Australia, I think the work goes deeper, is more vividly realistic and more perfect than my own.
Page xii - but something more than emotion is needed to make fine literature; and here we miss any genuine instinct of art or any mature power of thought, and are left at the end only with a painful sense of crudity. Miles Franklin is ardently devoted to Australia, but to a remote ideal Australia, and in the eagerness of her own embittered and egoistic mood she tramples under foot the things that really make Australia.
Page ix - The trees were not so majestic. The ranges were low and ragged without gorges and mighty rocks like castles and cascading streams draped with tree-ferns and maidenhair and flowering shrubberies along their banks. No lyrebirds gambolled across the track to flute in eucalyptus aisles across a big singing creek. Oh, Ajinby
Page xviii - the futility of my existence, my weakness in effort, my failure in accomplishment fill me with a creeping melancholy that grows more impenetrable. I will fight against it, once more by hard work, and if in two years the results are no better than in the past I shall die
Page ix - with its river, its creeks, large and small, full of fish, its wealth of orchards and ornamental trees, its flower gardens with pomegranates and magnolias! Here there were no rocks or ferns at all. There were no permanently running creeks, only weedy waterholes. Mother named the place
Page 25 - Australian life is too lacking in tradition, and too confused, to make many first-class novels.