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Brent of Bin Bin, Prelude to Waking: A Novel in the First Person and Parentheses  (1950)

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, better known simply as Miles Franklin, was a pioneer of Australian literature who is well remembered and commemorated to this day.

Born in 1879 on a homestead near Tumut in rural New South Wales, her family were long time pioneers in the Monaro district and her father John was a ‘native-born bushman [with] a touch of poetry in his make-up’. Educated initially by a private tutor, Franklin took an interest in writing from a young age, penning her first verse at the tender age of 8 and being published in the Goulburn Evening Penny Post when she was 16.

Success came early, as with the backing of Henry Lawson, Franklin was able to publish what remains arguably her most popular novel My Brilliant Career in 1901. The Bulletin praised it as ‘The very first Australian novel to be published… a warm embodiment of Australian life, as tonic as bush air, as aromatic as bush trees, and as clear and honest as bush sunlight’.

Propelled to fame she was courted by Banjo Patterson who sought literary collaboration and possibly more. However, no follow-up to My Brilliant Career was immediately forthcoming and in 1906 Franklin left for America. There she began working in Chicago for the National Women’s Trade Union League. Franklin wrote profusely but published only occasionally, with a 1909 book Some Everyday Folk and Dawn centring around the new phenomenon of Women’s suffrage in New South Wales and highlighting Franklin’s feminist leanings.

Her life in America was not a happy one, often overcome by anxiety she spent some time in a sanitorium before leaving for England in 1915. There she would remain for most of the next 17 years, working as a cook and an occasional journalist, trying to supplement what remained meagre literary earnings.

New success would come however, with a series based on her family’s pioneering history in regional New South Wales, and published under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin. The mystery surrounding the authorship proved to be a boon for marketing, and her authorship would remain concealed until after her death.

Three Bin Bin novels were published between 1928 and 1931, and were all well received. Prelude to Waking was published as the fourth but it did not come out until 1950, it had little connection to the characters and setting of the other books in the series, and indeed was based on a work first written in 1925 before Bin Bin took off. It was something of a dud according to critics and remains one of her least popular novels.

Despite this, Menzies’s copy is fascinating because of an enigmatic note attached to the front end paper, which seems to be a deliberate ploy to play up the mystery surrounding the author. It reads:

‘A first copy for the Prime Minister, with compliments. A first copy of the first volume in this series at the time of publication went to the Prime Minister of the day. It may not have reached him: he may not have been interested in Australian novels. Sent on behalf of BBB’.

Franklin returned to Australia in 1932, spending the rest of her life in the St George suburb of Carlton. Despite the reliance on a pseudonym for the Bin Bin series, she re-established her fame in her own name with the publication of All That Swagger in 1936, winning the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize.

Passing away in 1954, she had secretly endowed a prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, which was to be given to the year’s best novel or play which presents ‘Australian life in any of its phases’. It was Robert Menzies, who as Prime Minister in 1957 presented the first such award lending his prestige and esteem to Franklin’s huge reputation, and the result was that the award took off and remains one of if not the most prestigious in Australian literature (a field which Menzies had a good track record of supporting, particularly through his vast expansion of the Commonwealth Literary Fund).