46-451: On Dearborn Street is a novel by Australian author Miles Franklin , unpublished in her lifetime and first published in 1981. The book follows the life of Sybyl Penelo, an editor and businesswoman from Chicago who is determined to avoid marriage. After her wealthy love interest, Bobby Hoyne dies in a car race, she grows close to the older business man Mr. Cavarley and they become engaged. Two critics noted Sybyl's resemblance to Franklin. It
92-691: A biography of Joseph Furphy (1944) "in painful collaboration with Kate Baker ". Previously, in 1939, she and Baker had won the Prior Memorial prize for an essay on Furphy. Dever writes that the letters between Dymphna Cusack and Miles Franklin that are published in Yarn Spinners "provide a see-sawing commentary on the delicate art of literary collaboration". In her will she made a bequest for her estate to establish an annual literary award known as The Miles Franklin Award . The first winner
138-527: A central character, along with British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer , and Australian adventurer Olive King . Ostrovo Unit The Ostrovo Unit was a Field hospital unit with Transport Column of the Scottish Women's Hospitals . It comprised approximately 200 beds and was situated near Lake Ostrovo , Macedonia during the First World War under the command of
184-507: A habit of using foul language when stressed, which Bennett disapproved of, however, she appreciated the work both Cooper and Bedford put into the unit. Cooper was a skilled surgeon, who was popular in the unit, especially with the young ambulance drivers, as she encouraged their new found freedom to wear trousers, cut their hair short, and take up smoking. These freedoms alleviated the difficulty of their work, transporting seriously wounded and dying patients along very rough and rocky trails, fixing
230-532: A half day free each week, and one full day per month. When they had free time, she would join the nurses for a swim in Lake Ostrovo, where she said they could be seen "dancing a spirited reel on the shores in their bathing tights". The Ostrovo hospital camp had issues with outbreaks of diseases, and illness. They had problems with sanitation as the tented camp was not sewered. The site also had many flies and wasps, and there were outbreaks of malaria, endemic to
276-607: A high temperature, they would immediately be administered with painful and dreaded intramuscular quinine injections, which was the most effective treatment at the time. Franklin described these as ‘bayonet charges’. After eight months at the Ostrovo unit, having performed 144 surgeries, Cooper's reoccurring bronchitis developed into pneumonia in August 1917. Cooper and Bedford departed for London, where Cooper would recuperate, before they returned home to Brisbane. They were both awarded
322-413: A new recruit, Australian doctor Mary De Garis from Melbourne, arrived at the Ostrovo unit, and in her first month she alleviated Cooper from her rotation shift at Dobraveni. She was tasked with supervising the dressing station's camp reassembly after a recent move. De Garis found the constant air raids added a 'spice of excitement' to life, and the trenches, or 'funk holes' provided effective shelter. After
368-609: A row with everyone & insisted on being head. I just let 'em muddle along and take no notice as I've had a year's training in London of English ways. Will think my own thoughts and write a book if the plot comes into my head. From 1919 to 1926 Franklin worked as Secretary with the National Housing and Town Planning Association in London. She organised a women's international housing convention in 1924. Her life in England in
414-704: A sanatorium for a period in 1912 In 1915, she travelled to England and worked as a cook and earned some money from journalism. In March 1917 Franklin volunteered for war work in the Ostrovo Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals during the Serbian campaigns of 1917–18. She served as a cook and later matron's orderly in a 200-bed tent hospital attached to the Serbian army near Lake Ostrovo in Macedonian Greece from July 1917 to February 1918. Was made staff cook against my will. ... Then Miss Brown made
460-474: A troop transport carrying 3000 men, with only two other women, destined for Salonika. Once in Salonika she travelled to Ostrovo on a drive that she would describe as "the roughest journey I ever underwent". Working first as a cook then as an Matron's orderly, she was in charge of the stores of linen, bedding, clothing, and dressings. She said the work was hard physical labour, and they worked long hours, with only
506-584: A war on Australian soil at this time. While Miles Franklin had many suitors, she never married. She died on 19 September 1954, aged 74 and her ashes were scattered in Jounama Creek, Talbingo close to where she was born. Miles Franklin engaged in a number of literary collaborations throughout her life. In addition to co-editing the journal Life and Labor with Alice Henry in the US, she also wrote Pioneers on Parade in collaboration with Dymphna Cusack and
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#1732772657321552-929: The Battle of Passchendaele . Deep in grief, she boarded the troopship HMAT Wiltshire to return to Australia. De Garis took over the Ostrovo unit as the Chief Medical Officer. Bennett was awarded a Serbian Order of St. Sava third class for her contributions as the Chief Medical Officer of the Ostrovo Unit in The SWH. Franklin worked for 6 months, until the end of her contract in February 1918. De Garis would stay as CMO for another year. In that time she, like most SWH staff, would suffer through bouts of serious sickness including typhoid, dysentery, and malaria. However, she remained an effective leader. She
598-769: The National Women's Trade Union League in Chicago, and co-edited the league's magazine, Life and Labor . Her years in the US are reflected in On Dearborn Street (not published until 1981), a love story that uses American slang in a manner not dissimilar to the early work of Dashiell Hammett . Also while in America she wrote Some Everyday Folk and Dawn (1909), the story of a small-town Australian family, which uses purple prose for deliberate comic effect. She suffered regular bouts of ill health and entered
644-539: The Order of St Sava , Cooper a 4th Class, and Bedford a 5th class, for their service in the unit. The next month Bennett caught malaria while at the Dobroveni dressing station. She became very unwell, and when the ambulance returned to the main camp, her colleagues were shocked at how ill she was. So, after 16 months she had to resign due to ill-health. She returned to Egypt, where she learned of her brother Bob's death at
690-579: The Order of the British Empire . In this period of her life Franklin was a constant attendee and speaker at various cultural and literary events. Her message was centred on free speech and the championing of Australian literature. Franklin was not a member of any political party, although her diaries reveal an interest in socialism and ASIO did have a file on Franklin during the Cold War. Franklin's literary friend P.R. ('Inky') Stephenson launched
736-527: The S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1939 together with Kate Baker for their collaborative work 'Who Was Joseph Furphy?'. Throughout her life, Franklin actively supported Australian literature . She joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 1933 and the Sydney PEN Club in 1935. She encouraged young writers such as Jean Devanny , Sumner Locke Elliott and Ric Throssell and she supported
782-706: The Serbian Army . It was often called The America Unit as the money to fund it came from America and except for a few dressing stations, it was the Allied hospital nearest the front. Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett , an Australian, New Zealand doctor had travelled to London in May 1916, and met with Elsie Inglis at the Lyceum club. They knew each other because Inglis has been the dean of the College of Medicine for Women at
828-643: The University of Edinburgh while Bennett was completing her studies there. Inglis and the SWH were recuperating and regrouping after the Great Retreat , and were recruiting more staff. Bennett had just been working in an infectious diseases hospital in Cairo, and was looking for another role to assist the war effort. Inglis tasked her with establishing a new SWH unit to be deployed to Greece where she would lead as
874-630: The 1920s gave rise to Bring the Monkey (1933), a satire on the English country house mystery novel. The book reveals Franklin's views on nationality and class. The book was a literary and commercial failure. Franklin resettled in Australia in 1932 after the death of her father in 1931. During that decade she wrote several historical novels of the Australian bush, most of which were published under
920-732: The Australian Army had refused her application to serve in 1915, De Garis had stayed working as a doctor in Australia until mid-1916. This was when her fiancé Sergeant Colin Thomson, who had survived Gallipoli, was deployed to the Western Front. De Garis's anxiety for him saw her travel to London, arriving on 14 July 1916, to take a role at the Manor War Hospital , as a means to be closer to him. However, soon after arriving, Thomson's postcards stopped and De Garis received
966-483: The Chief Medical Officer. Bennett travelled to Scotland to recruit 55 staff members and organise supplies, including the fleet of model-T Fords which were to be converted to Ambulances for an attached transport column, initially commanded by English suffragist Katherine Harley . Bennett took discipline seriously, and she was concerned by the behaviour of the women in Harley's unit who she felt were unruly, After three months
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#17327726573211012-561: The SWH with her long-term companion Mary Josephine Bedford , arriving at the Ostrovo unit in September 1916. Cooper was the third surgeon to join the unit, and Bedford, who had mechanical knowledge, managed the ambulance fleet, becoming the Chief Transport Officer. Bedford’s ability to source spare parts for the fleet of 12 converted T-model Ford ambulances led to her the nickname ‘Miss Spare Parts’. Cooper herself had
1058-424: The SWH with pleasure. Practical experience has convinced me that women run things very well, making me a more ardent feminist than ever.” De Garis was awarded a third class Order of St. Sava medal for her service. Following De Garis's resignation, Dr. Isobel Emslie became the third and final Chief Medical Officer, who led the unit to the end of the war. In Dr Isobel Emslie's words: "The spirit of this unit
1104-497: The ambulances when broken down, or getting them un-bogged from deep potholes. With the fighting 25 km away, it took the Ambulances three to four hours to travel via narrow mule tracks, over rough terrain. This was too long for some of the wounded who died on the journey. So in late 1916, Bennett received permission from the local Serbian commander to open a dressing station, a small tent hospital of 25 beds, at Dobraveni, closer to
1150-486: The area, spread by mosquitos. Bennett, and De Garis, and the staff had to pay careful attention to establishing and maintaining hygienic latrines and urinals so that outbreaks of diseases such as dysentery and infection diarrhoea were minimised. They took care to regularly fill latrines, taking note of previous locations. De Garis attempted to address the issues with malaria by ordering a nearby swamp to be drained. The staff covered up and put up mosquito nets. If anyone recorded
1196-405: The battlefield. Dr Bennett wrote of the girls' courage during bombardment. However malaria and dysentery took such a toll on the staff that the station was closed in September 1917. On 30 September 1918 the unit received news of the armistice with Bulgaria and on the morning of 23 October the unit started for northern Serbia with a convoy of nine vehicles on a 311 kilometre trek. All the staff made
1242-447: The fighting, where their staff would be rotated every 6 weeks, due to the intensity of the work, and the freezing conditions. The site was in the foothills of Voras Mountains , and was desolate, treeless and windy. British masseuse and trained physical instructor, Olive Smith who had joined the unit with Dr Bennett from the start, and worked in the operating theatre and reception, died of malaria on 6 October 1916. In February 2017
1288-469: The first eight weeks the America Unit admitted 425 cases of whom sixty died. The unit was approximately ninety miles west of Salonika and was in a beautiful location. According to its third CMO Dr Isobel Emslie : "It lay quite by itself on a green sward in the hollow of the hills which rose on every side; close by was a clump of ancient elm-trees, the home of families of cawing rooks, and beyond
1334-545: The local Goulburn newspaper. Her best known novel, My Brilliant Career , tells the story of an irrepressible teenage girl, Sybylla Melvyn, growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales. It was published in 1901 with the support of Australian writer, Henry Lawson . After its publication, Franklin tried a career in nursing, and then as a housemaid in Sydney and Melbourne. Whilst doing this she contributed pieces to The Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald under
1380-645: The new literary journals, Meanjin and Southerly . Miles entertained literary figures at her home in Carlton, NSW. An autograph book known as Miles Franklin's Waratah Book held by the State Library of NSW was used for autographs and inscriptions. Guests were encouraged to drink tea from the Waratah Cup and to write in the Waratah Book. In 1937, Franklin declined appointment as an Officer of
1426-599: The news that he had died on 4 August, at the battle at Pozieres . In the following months, she channelled her grief into taking action, resigning from the Manor War Hospital, and applying to the SWH. In December 2016, her application was accepted, and she was appointed as Bennett's second in command. Australian novelist, Stella Miles Franklin joined the unit in July 1917. On her journey from London, she travelled through Paris, Turin, Rome, and Taranto, before boarding
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1472-441: The pro-isolationist, anti-war Australia First Movement in late 1941, to which Franklin was vehemently opposed, as evidenced by her diary entries and correspondence at the time - "Reds or pinks or 'rightists' all showed their ignorance" she wrote after attending a AFM meeting, and of Stephenson "I could not have anything to do with his politics". Franklin was staunchly anti-war and, traumatized by her WWI experiences, very much feared
1518-497: The pseudonym "Brent of Bin Bin". New South Wales State Librarian, Dagmar Schmidmaier , said "Miles increasingly feared that nothing she wrote matched the success of My Brilliant Career and resorted to writing under different names, including the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin, to protect herself from poor reviews." However, All That Swagger was published under her own name in 1936, winning the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize . Franklin also won
1564-449: The pseudonyms "An Old Bachelor" and "Vernacular." During this period she wrote My Career Goes Bung in which Sybylla encounters the Sydney literary set, but it was not released to the public until 1946. An overtly anti-war play, The Dead Must Not Return , was not published or performed but received a public reading in September 2009. In 1906, Franklin moved to the US and undertook secretarial work for Alice Henry , another Australian, at
1610-402: The transport column was also placed under her authority. Initially they planned to be based in Salonika, however on arrival the plan changed due to the fighting front shifting to Macedonia. So the unit ended up being based close to the front line, in the hills at Lake Ostrovo . The unit opened in September 1916 soon after the Battle of Malka Nidzhe (Gornichevo ridge). Gornichevo ridge formed
1656-403: The twin summits of Kaimaktsalan , 7,700 and 8,200 feet above sea level. This ridge had to be captured before Monastir ( Bitola on modern British maps) could be re-taken. Bennett recorded on the first day that they took 24 cases: "all terribly bad wounds - abdominal, chest, head and compound fractures". On 25 September she wrote: "We now have 160 cases, all bad and it is terribly hard work." During
1702-632: The white tents of the hospital lay Lake Ostrovo." Miles Franklin wrote: "The royal sunlight on the purple hills! Blue as heaven, high and peaked like cats' teeth, they intensified a longing for the Blue Bogongs that was ten years poignant." Franklin was inspired to write a story, By Far Kaimaktchalan and a piece entitled Somewhere in the Balkans but finished neither. Ne Mari Nishta (It matters nothing) remains her only finished account of her time there. She left in February 1918. The America Unit
1748-679: Was Patrick White with Voss in 1957. The Canberra suburb of Franklin and the nearby primary school Miles Franklin Primary School are named in her honour. The school holds an annual writing competition in her memory. Additionally the Franklin Public School in Tumut , NSW is also named in her honour. During her lifetime Miles Franklin donated several items to the Mitchell Library . Manuscript material
1794-511: Was a strict disciplinarian, but fair according to her staff, who saw her as their “guide, philosopher and friend’. She continued to experience deep mourning for Thomson, and this was compounded in June 1918 when her mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Missing her family, she resigned as CMO in September 1918. She said of her time in Macedonia: “I shall always remember my association with
1840-540: Was a very pleasant one; the big, happy family of women was so entirely thrown on its own resources that it formed a very united body. Most of the sisters had been so much with the Serbians that they had learnt the language and were thoroughly in sympathy with them. Ours was a Serbian Army hospital, and we took our orders directly from Army Headquarters." At the advanced dressing station established three hours drive further up Kaimaktsalan he unit took casualties direct from
1886-541: Was further recognised in 2013 with the creation of the Stella Prize , awarded annually for the best work of literature by an Australian woman. Franklin was born at Talbingo, New South Wales , and grew up in the Brindabella Valley on a property called Brindabella Station . She was the eldest child of Australian-born parents, John Maurice Franklin and Susannah Margaret Eleanor Franklin, née Lampe, who
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1932-498: Was not published until 1936. She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and writers' organisations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major annual prize for literature about "Australian Life in any of its phases", the Miles Franklin Award . Her impact
1978-654: Was noted for its feminist themes but the use of American English vernacular and the overarching plot was criticized. It has been described as a " New Woman " novel by Professor Janet Lee. Miles Franklin Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (14 October 1879 – 19 September 1954), known as Miles Franklin , was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career , published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger ,
2024-899: Was presented over the period 1937–1942. The various drafts of "Pioneers on Parade" were presented in 1940. She bequeathed her printed book collection, correspondence and notes as well as the poems of Mary Fullerton . 47 of Miles Franklin's diaries are in the State Library of New South Wales , including one copy discovered in 2018. A revival of interest in Franklin occurred in the wake of the Australian New Wave film My Brilliant Career (1979), which won several international awards. In 2014, Google Doodle celebrated her 135th birthday. In her 2022 novel, Salonika Burning , The Australian writer Gail Jones fictionalises Miles Franklin (as 'Stella'), and her experiences in Macedonia, as
2070-530: Was the great-granddaughter of Edward Miles (or Moyle) who had arrived with the First Fleet in the Scarborough with a seven-year sentence for theft. Her family was a member of the squattocracy . She was educated at home until 1889 when she attended Thornford Public. During this period she was encouraged in her writing by her teacher, Mary Gillespie (1856–1938) and Tom Hebblewhite (1857–1923) editor of
2116-551: Was the unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals in which at least ten Australian women served. Other Australians served in a similar unit near Salonika. The Anglo-Irish medical physicist Edith Anne Stoney provided x-ray support to the unit while being based at Salonika. Australian doctor Lilian Violet Cooper , who was born in Britain, but had spent the last 25 years living in Queensland, travelled to Europe to volunteer with
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