by Jill Roe
Linklater, Andro, An Unhusbanded Life: Charlotte Despard, Suffragette, Socialist and Sinn Feiner, Hutchinson, London, 1980
Magarey, Susan, Unbridling the Tongues of Women: A Biography of Catherine Helen Spence, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985
——, Passions of the First-Wave Feminists, University of NSW Press, Kensington, NSW, 2001
Martin, David, My Strange Friend, Pan Macmillan, Chippendale, NSW, 1991
Martin, Sylvia, Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton & Miles Franklin, Onlywomen Press, London, 2001
——, Ida Leeson, A Life, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2006
Mathew, Ray, Miles Franklin, Oxford University Press, London, 1963
Mazower, Mark, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430–1950, HarperCollins, London, 2004
Melman, Billie, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs, Macmillan, London, 1988
Meyerowitz, Joanne J., Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago 1880–1930, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988
Modjeska, Drusilla, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1981
Munro, Craig, Wild Man of Letters: The Story of P. R. Stephensen, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1984
Newsome, Stella, Women’s Freedom League 1907–1957, London, [c.1960]
North, Marilla (ed.), Yarn Spinners. A Story in Letters: Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 2001
O’Harris, Pixie, Was It Yesterday?, Rigby, Adelaide, 1983
Palmer, A., The Gardeners of Salonika, Andre Deutsch, London, 1965
Pfisterer, Susan, Playing with Ideas: Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties, Currency Press, Sydney, 1999
Roderick, Colin, Miles Franklin: Her Brilliant Career, Rigby, Adelaide, 1982
Roe, Jill, ‘Chivalry and Social Policy in the Antipodes’, [Australian] Historical Studies, vol. 22, no. 88, 1987
———, ‘“Testimonies from the Field”: The Coming of Christian Science to Australia, c.1890–1910’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 22, no. 3, October 1998
———, ‘Forcing the Issue: Miles Franklin and National Identity’, Hecate, vol. 17, no. 1, 1991
———, ‘Miles Franklin: Bush Intellectual’, NSW Premier’s History Awards Address, Ministry for the Arts, Sydney, 2004
Smith, Vivian (ed.), Letters of Vance and Nettie Palmer 1915–1963, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1977
——— (ed.), Nettie Palmer, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1988
Spearritt, Peter, Sydney’s Century: A History, University of NSW Press, Kensington, NSW, 2000
Spinney, Robert G., City of Big Shoulders: A History of Chicago, Northern Illinois Press, De Kalb, Ill., 2000
Throssell, Ric, Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers: The Life and Letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1975
Trewin, J. C., The Theatre Since 1900, A. C. Dakers, London, 1951
Wilde, W. H., Courage a Grace: A Biography of Dame Mary Gilmore, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 1988
Woollacott, Angela, To Try Her Fortune In London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2001
Unpublished theses
Heath, Lesley, ‘Sydney Literary Societies of the Nineteen Twenties: Cultural Nationalism and the Promotion of Australian Literature’, PhD thesis, University of NSW, 1996
Hedley, Jocelyn, ‘The Unpublished Plays of Miles Franklin’, MA thesis, University of NSW, 2007
Jones, Caroline Viera, ‘Australian Imprint: The Influence of George Robertson on a National Narrative (1890–1935)’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2004
ENDNOTES
This is the first full biography of Miles Franklin to be based on the Franklin Papers, held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Numerous related original materials located there and elsewhere in major Australian and overseas libraries have also been utilised. Extensive supporting references are provided for interested readers and to assist future researchers.
The notes are generally grouped by paragraph. Biographical details not included in the text are located in these notes and are indexed. Short titles are used for frequently cited references. Full details have been given in the bibliography.
The following abbreviations are used in the notes:
* in My Congenials: Miles Franklin and Friends in Letters 1879–1954, vols 1 and 2
ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission/Corporation
ADB/ADB S Australian Dictionary of Biography/Supplementary Volume
AFWS Australian Federation of Women’s Societies
AHS [Australian] Historical Studies
ALS Australian Literary Studies
ANB American National Biography (prev. Dictionary of American Biography)
BA British Australasian
BMD Births, Marriages and Deaths
CDT Chicago Daily Tribune
CHS Chicago Historical Society
corres. correspondence
DD Dorothea Dreier
d.o.b./d.o.d. date of birth/date of death
DT Daily Telegraph
ed./eds editor/s
FAW Fellowship of Australian Writers
FP Franklin Papers
GRAGERP Goulburn and Regional Art Gallery Exhibition Research Project
HA History Australia
HHR Henry Handel Richardson
JMF John Maurice Franklin
L&L Life and Labor
KSP Katharine Susannah Prichard
LN Literary Notebook
MD Macquarie Dictionary
MDR Margaret Dreier Robins
ML Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney
ms./mss manuscript/s
NAA National Archives Australia, Canberra
NAW Notable American Women
n.d./n.p. no date/no further details of publication
NHTPC National Housing and Town Planning Council
NLA National Library of Australia, Canberra
NYT New York Times
OCAH Oxford Companion to Australian History
OCAL Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2nd edition, 1994)
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
pb. paperback
PBC Miles Franklin’s Printed Books Collection
PD Pocket Diary
Penny Post Goulburn Evening Penny Post
pers. comm. personal communication
repr. reprinted/reproduced
RR Raymond Roberts
RS Rose Scott
SF Susannah Eleanor Franklin
SMF Stella Miles Franklin
SMH Sydney Morning Herald
SRNSW State Records NSW, Sydney
SWH Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service
TLS Times Literary Supplement
ts./tss typescript/s
unpub. unpublished
VG Vida Goldstein
WFL Women’s Freedom League
WSPU Women’s Social and Political Union
WTUL Women’s Trade Union League
Chapter 1 — Childhood at Brindabella
1J. McIntyre, Bowral, to Stella Miles Franklin, 8/7/1902, FP vol. 8 (spellings as in the original).
2Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, New York, 2002, p. 7; Martha Bridle to SF, 31/12/1878, FP vol. 108 (‘out of the way place’).
3Paul Mann, ‘Brindabella Valley’, Australian Geographic, 1986, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 106; ‘The Story of an Irish Pioneer’, Queanbeyan Observer and Captain’s Flat Mining Record, 2/9/1898, p. 3, and SMF to William Wilkinson, 6/10/1937, FP vol. 50; Childhood at Brindabella, p. 151.
4W. Hanson, Geographical Encyclopedia of Australia, Govt Printer, Sydney, 1892, p. 45; SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107 [p. 102]; Colonial City, Global
City.Sydney’s International Exhibition 1879, eds Peter Proudfoot, Roslyn Maguire and Robert Freestone, Crossing Press, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2000. The Exhibition closed Apr. 1880.
5Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 10, 22. Re SF’s accomplishments, see NLA MS4771/1 (card album), ML SSV* Art 56 (watercolour, c.1875), and FP vol. 110 (verses); Jane Hunt, ‘Unrelaxing Fortitude: Susannah Franklin’, ALS, 2002; Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 65–6. The original ‘Wambrook’ is located in Somerset (site visit, Margaret Francis, 23/6/2006). Leslie Bridle recalled her aunt Sue (Susannah Franklin) as humourless (pers. comm., 5/12/1982).
6Linda Franklin to SMF, 16/9/1901, and Helena Lampe to SMF, 6/10/1906, FP vol. 49. Dorothy Mortlock, née Baxter, recalls JMF sobering up at the Baxter house on his way home from Goulburn (cited Jennifer Lamb (comp.) ‘Miles Franklin’s “My Brilliant (?) Career”! Goulburn and District References’, in GRAGERP, in 2001, p. 9). The famous ‘Snowy River’ poem by Andrew Barton (‘Banjo’) Paterson, who was also bred on the Yass Plains, was first published 1890; Childhood at Brindabella, p. 10.
7J. M. Franklin, ‘The Federal Capital’, Penny Post, 12/5/1900, p. 5, and ‘Using the Cotter River’, Penny Post, 17/10/1901, p. 4; Queanbeyan Observer and Captain’s Flat Mining Record, 2/9/1898, p. 3. For Robert Cartwright (1771–1856), Anglican bush parson extraordinaire, see ADB vol. 1.
8Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 4, 50–3, 57; SMF to Mary Fullerton, 24/3/1944, FP vol. 18.
9Roderick, Miles Franklin, p. 39; ‘A Trip to Brindabella’, a series of jottings by ‘Wombat’, Adelong and Tumut Express, 24/2/1911 [p. 2] (said there to be approaching 200,000 acres/81,000 hectares) (ML); Jane Brumfield, ‘PM Can only Dream of the Catch He Didn’t Land’, Weekend Australian, 15–16/12/1979, p. 3; Tumut & Adelong Times, 24/4/1928 [p. 5].
10Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 59, 31, 11; NSW: Legislative Assembly, Votes & Proceedings, 1885, vol. III, Appendix 2; All That Swagger, pp. 310–11.
11SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107 [pp. 46, 49, 25, 81, 83]; see ch. 2 for the birth of Laurel. ‘Rankin’ was the family name of Maria Franklin; ‘Talmage’ was the name of a visiting American evangelist, Dr Thomas De Witt Talmage.
12De Berg interview; Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 81–2, 105, 107, 112, 142. A licence on Talbingo Station was obtained in the 1850s; when taken over by Oltmann and Sarah Lampe in 1866, it was 30,000 acres in extent with a grazing capacity of 6,000 sheep, ‘Wombat’, ‘Historical Tumut’, Tumut Advocate, 11/1/1910 [p. 2]; Colin Roderick, Guard Book 6, Roderick Papers, MS 1578, NLA. ‘Herrenvolk’: ‘master race’, (German), (MD).
13Childhood at Brindabella, ch. 10.
14SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107 [p. 45]. Thomas and Annie Franklin had seven children in all.
15Childhood at Brindabella, p. 89; Charles Blyth to SMF, 17/12/1887, FP vol. 6.
16Charles Blyth to SMF, 4/5/1893, FP vol. 6; Childhood at Brindabella, p. 88.
17PBC no. 836 (note: author’s name Whittemore, not Whittlemore); SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107 [p. 101].
18Charles Blyth to SMF, 5/5/1895, FP vol. 6.
19Childhood at Brindabella, p. 91.
20Charles Blyth to SMF, 6/7/1889, FP vol. 6; Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 10, 63, 64, 105.
21Childhood at Brindabella, p. 11 (the broken-down prospector was probably a nephew of Edward John Hopkins (1818–1901)), organist, (ODNB); SMF to W. Stafford, 20/10/1935, FP vol. 28; Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 145–6; SMF to W. A. Lampe, 15/1/1953, FP vol. 49 (ditties).
22SMF to Metta Lampe, 2/2/1889, FP vol. 113X; De Berg interview; transcript of ‘First Ten Years’ by Ruby Bridle in my possession (gift from the Max Kelly estate); Charles Blyth to SMF, 6/7/1889, FP vol. 6.
23Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 99, 100–3.
24ibid., pp. 106, 99, 136; De Berg interview.
25Childhood at Brindabella, p. 119.
26ibid., p. 119.
27Barnard, Miles Franklin, p. 16; Childhood at Brindabella, pp. 114, 103.
Chapter 2 — Near Goulburn
1Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career, p. 96.
2NSW Census, 1891, Municipalities, Goulburn, p. 22 (population 10,916).
3‘Serious disputes’: affidavit in support of certificate of release, NSW Supreme Court (Bankruptcy), 27/7/1897, incl. documents, No. 1124 (ref. 10/23117), and for comment on the breakup, see All That Swagger, p. 318; Penny Post, 23/1/1890, p. 4, and 2/4/1895, p. 4; SF, Notebook, vol. 107 [p. 97]; Childhood at Brindabella, p. 95, and My Brilliant Career, p. 8.
4Site visit, 30/3/2002.
5Literary Notebooks, FP vol. 3, pp. 462–3, repr. Diaries, pp. 168–9.
6Present-day ‘Stillwater’ as marked on ordnance survey maps is on a different site, nearer to and visible to the south from the Thornford road. The property, owned by the Baxter family in the 1890s, was then called ‘Longfield’. Jacob Baxter purchased the ‘Stillwater’ blocks in 1906, Penny Post, 11/5/1937, p. 4 (Baxter obit.).
7Land purchases at Bangalore date back to 1833 (NSW Government Gazette, 21/8/1833, p. 329) and a farm named ‘Bangalore’ was established by 1836 (Allan E. J. Edwards, Earliest Monaro and Burragorang, 1790 to 1840, Palmerston, ACT, 1998, n.p., pp. 89–90); news from Bangalore, Penny Post, e.g. 10/5/94, p. 4. My Congenials, vol. 1 has several letters from SMF at Bangalore, 1899–1902.
8Alphabetical Index to Country Localities of NSW: Thornford (13 miles south-west of Goulburn); NSW Government Railways. Timetable & Fares, Government Printer, Sydney, 1892, p. 61; Ray Mooney, pers. comm., Goulburn, 31/3/2002; My Brilliant Career, p. 9; Bangalore cemetery site visit, 30/3/2002. Re Penelope Sybilla Macauley (1852–99), NSW BMD indexes, and Penny Post, 20/7/1899, p. 4.
9NSW Post Office Directory 1889–90; Penny Post 10/5/1894, p. 4 (‘one of the finest roads in the colony’).
10My Brilliant Career, p. 8; Wyatt, History of Goulburn, p. 259. By 1899 there were twelve at Thornford in addition to JMF: Jacob Baxter, farmer; Moses Bilton, hawker; Samuel Crouch, dealer; Edward McCallister, grazier; Thomas and John Macauley, dairy farmers; William Neely, dairy farmer; Walter Oakley, fruit grower; Alex Paton, John Rowe, Henry Taylor and [?] Woods, all farmers; NSW Post Office Commercial Directory, 1898–99.
11My Brilliant Career, p. 8, but the early chapters of Cockatoos are the best source; see also Childhood at Brindabella, p. 97.
12Schools: petition for the establishment of a provisional school at Thornford, 4/3/1889 (signatories John Macauley, James Smith, Will J. Neely and T. A. Macauley), SRNSW, 5/17831.3; Index to Teachers’ Rolls (m/f, reel 1994) and Mae Gillespie, ‘History of Thornford Public School’, Schools File [1913], NSW Dept of School Education Archives. Wesleyan churches: est. Bangalore, 1859 (SMH, 26/8/1859, p. 5), Thornford, 1883 (Weekly Advocate, 19/1/1884, p. 343). Mary Anne Elizabeth Gillespie (1856–1938), teacher, SMH, 13/6/1938, p. 8.
13Letter dated 28/1/1890, 5/17831.3, and Index to Teachers’ Rolls (reel 1994) NSW Dept of School Education Archives.
14Re Miss Gillespie, Dorothy Mortlock, née Baxter, interview 1984, held Goulburn & District Historical Society; Marcelle Leicht, ‘Miles Franklin’s Life in the Goulburn District’, in GRAGERP, 2001, p. 8.
15Charles Blyth to SMF, 4/5/1895, FP vol. 6; J. Fletcher and J. Burnswoods, Government Schools in NSW 1848–1963, NSW Dept of Education, Sydney, 1963, p. 250; Charles Blyth to SMF, 27/7/1894, FP vol. 6.
16‘History of Thornford School’, passim; Penny Post, 25/2/1892, p. 4 and 27/8/1892, p. 4. Picnics were held in Feb., at the beginning of the new school year.
17(Sir) Frederick (Baron) von Mueller, Introduction to Botanic Teachings at the Schoolsof Victoria, through References to Leading Native Plants, Ferres, Melbourne, 1877, PBC no. 343, (and ADB vol. 5); Childhood at Brindabella, p. 59 (‘unafraid’); Up the Country, p. 30; Penny Post, 6/11/1894, p. 2 and 23/2/1895, p. 2.
18Trilby: A Novel, Bell, London and Bombay, 1894; Esther Waters: An English Story, Scott, London, 1894; Charles Blyth to SMF, 24/6/1896, FP vol. 6.
19LN, FP vol. 3, pp. 464–8.
20[?] to SMF, n.d., FP vol. 46, p. 1
09 (a) and (c); W. C. Cooper to SMF, 15/12/1893, FP vol. 6; ‘Gossip by the Way’, Book Lover, Aug. 1905, vol. 7, no. 76, p. 1 (dated 1900); My Brilliant Career, pp. 78, 142; ‘Goulburn Technological Museum’, Goulburn Herald, 11/7/1892, n.p., Childhood at Brindabella, p. 141.
21FP vol. 111, cards notifying exam time; Penny Post, 11/12/1894, p. 2, 16/1/1896, p. 2 and 25/2/1896, p. 4; Cockatoos, p. 204.
22Jill Roe, ‘Miles Franklin and 1890s Goulburn’, ALS, 2002, and Ransome T. Wyatt, History of Goulburn, N.S.W., Municipality of Goulburn, Goulburn, 1945, ch. XIX, Cultural Societies; LN, FP vol. 3, p. 650 and FP vol. 51A, clippings of singers and theatre; Cockatoos, pp. 7–8, 101ff.; SMF to Thomas Wood, 31/12/1944, ML MSS3659/1; Wood (1892–1950) was a composer (ODNB).
23Lynne Vallone, Disciplines of Virtue: Girls’ Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, c.1995, pp. 2, 5; ‘Still Brilliant 100 Years On’, Macquarie University News, Sept. 2001, p. 6, résumé of unpub. paper, Beverley Kingston, ‘Miles Franklin: an Australian Girl’.
24SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107, back cover. Thornford Proprietary Butter Factory was launched in 1890, probably at Baxter’s ‘Longfield’, Goulburn & District Historical Society Bulletin, Jul. 1971, p. 2.
25FP vol. 50, pp. 129c–130; Papers filed in Bankruptcy, cited n. 3 above; Goulburn Herald, 21/8/1896, p. 5; SF, Notebook, FP vol. 107, back cover.
26JMF, Affidavit, 1897; Tal Franklin to SMF, 10/10/1896, FP vol. 48 (filed 2nd letter), Charles Blyth to SMF, 20/3/1897, FP vol. 6.
27JMF (from ‘Stillwater’) to SMF, 7/12/1896, FP vol. 48; Charles Blyth to SMF, 20/3/1897, FP vol. 6.
28‘Daughters and Fathers’, Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell, Santa Barbara, Calif., 2001, vol. 1; Linda Franklin to SMF [1902], FP vol. 49; Bruce Scates, ‘Miles Franklin’s Radicalism’, ALS, 2002; Penny Post, 3/7/1894, p. 3 (advertisement). Edward William O’Sullivan (1846–1910) MLA, represented Queanbeyan for nineteen years (ADB, vol. 11); JMF was enrolled in the Collector division of his electorate; B. E. Mansfield, Australian Democrat: The Career of Edward William O’Sullivan 1846–1910, Sydney Univ. Press, Sydney, 1965.
29‘Daughters and Mothers’, ‘Emotions’, Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell, Santa Barbara, Calif., 2001, vol. 2, pp. 196, 256; Jane Hunt, ‘Unrelaxing Fortitude’, ALS, 2002; My Brilliant Career, p. 30.