![]() ![]() Lingering in the mind are Franklin's lush evocations of the Australian landscape, alternately loved and loathed. "I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse," writes Sybylla, whose intellectual and artistic talents are stifled in "stagnant" Possum Gully where she must toil beneath the burning sun, suppressing her "hot wild spirit". ![]() This impassioned debut novel by Miles Franklin – who bequeathed funds to establish the country's most prestigious writing prize, the Miles Franklin literary award – was written when its author was only 16 and glistens with precocious wisdom. ![]() "Why do I write? Why does anyone write?" asks the teenage Sybylla, who dreams of pursuing a brilliant career as a writer, but, as she pens a book on "purloined paper", faces heartrending obstacles in 1890s rural Australia, from her family's poverty to societal misogyny. ![]()
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