The fierce, irreverent novel of aspiration and rebellion that is both a cornerstone of Australian literature and a feminist classic

Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant Career when she was only sixteen, intending it to be the Australian answer to Jane Eyre. But the book she produced-a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about a young girl hungering for life and love in the outback-so scandalized her country upon its appearance in 1901 that she insisted it not be published again until ten years after her death.

Sandra M. Gilbert teaches at the University of California, Davis.