Squattocracy

Tale Of Early

The late Miles Franklin was one of Australia’s most talented and most mysterious authors but

the story of her childhood, pub

lished recently under the title Childhood at Brindabella, while it might explain the former does nothing to account for the latter.

HER literary reticence is believed to have fallen on her after the publication of her first novel — My Brilliant Career— in 1901, in which friends, relatives and residents of the town in which it supposedly was set, claimed to identify themselves with her characters. Although Miss Frank lin continued to write under her own name —sometimes at long intervals— she also wrote the Brent of Bin Bin series ( Up Country, Ten Creeks

Run, etc.), although she never ac knowledged authorship of them until 1954, the year of her death.

The best-known of her novels of Australian pioneering life was All That Swagger, which won the S. H.

Prior Memorial Prize in 1936. This noval was based on pioneering his tory in the area around what is now Canberra and where Miles herself was brought up on family properties.

Her last book—now published al most a decade after her death — covers her first 10 years and is a fascinating and quite delightful ac count of Australian “squattocracy” life of the late Victorian period. It could, in its time, become a small classic not only of Australian litera ture but for its portrayal of a period when the virtues of strength of character and the ability to tell right from wrong (without the help of a psychiatrist) were still valued.

It is illustrated with old family por traits which show uniformly hand some, bearded men, and beautiful

women.

JT.

(Childhood At Brindabella.

Angus and Robertson Ltd. 25/-.)