A Comet of Wonder Fallen to Earth: The Diaries of Miles Franklin.

Abstract

Franklin published fifteen books in her lifetime becoming a respected literary figure in Australia in her last twenty years. But none of the books would be quite the success that "My Brilliant Career" was, at least in her own mind. In the period immediately following its publication, when Franklin was taken into Rose Scott’s glittering circle, she was regarded, she believed, as a ‘comet of wonder’ by many people. She rather liked that. By the time she wrote about this in her diary in April 1949, she added the phrase ‘God knows why’. The comet had plummeted to earth. Now she had the gnawing doubt that perhaps she really was not a great writer. Franklin's diaries bring her to life in all her infinite variety.‘I bewilder myself, I’m so complex,’ she wrote to Emma Pischel, a friend from Chicago days, in May 1947, ‘so how cd he who knows me not, be able to unravel me?’ The diaries help in the unravelling process.