By Theresa Smith

A post in our 2026 series featuring works published in 1946 (or by authors who died in 1946).

In 1946, Miles Franklin published My Career Goes Bung, a ‘sequel’ to her debut novel, My Brilliant Career. This sequel came 45 years on from its predecessor; however, it was written four weeks after the initial publication of My Brilliant Career. It was initially rejected by Angus & Robertson, Australia’s major publisher of the time, and then was stashed away, lost during the first world war, reunited with its author in the 1930s, heavily reworked, and then ultimately, published in 1946.

Calling it a sequel though, is misleading.

“This second portrait of Sybylla Penelope was classified as delicious by the only person to whom it was submitted at the time: that it was also regarded by him as “too audacious for publication” seems quaint today and indicates how smug behaviour must have been when it was written. It is to-day inveterately dedicated to all Australian writers who were as young, who are as young, and who each decade for ever will be forthcoming as young as I was when first I foolhardily tried to write.”

MILES FRANKLIN,
AUSTRALIA.

(Extract of Forward of My Career Goes Bung)

After reading both novels back-to-back, I regard My Career Goes Bung as more of a companion novel. Essentially, it’s a continuation of a different version of My Brilliant Career, a meta fictional correction in which the protagonist, Sybylla Penelope Melvyn debunks her published novel, My Brilliant Career, as being autobiographical. Through Sybylla’s insistence that her novel is a work of fiction, Miles Franklin is likewise insisting that her novel is a work of fiction; said novel being the same one for both the protagonist and the author, who are, however, not the same person. Confused? So was I. After finishing My Brilliant Career and diving straight into My Career Goes Bung and thinking I was reading a sequel, it was discombobulating to encounter a Sybylla who appeared to have been plucked out of one life and dropped down into another. I had to stop reading and start looking up whatever I could find about the books to fully understand what was going on. Hence, I do really wish it wasn’t referred to as a sequel. In a nut shell though, everyone seemed to think that My Brilliant Career was a fictionalised autobiography, and to address this, Miles Franklin wrote My Career Goes Bung, a very clever piece of metafiction that unfortunately did not get published as the timely correction she had hoped for.

Which one then, is more autobiographical? My Brilliant Career? Or My Career Goes Bung? Does it even matter? What if, instead, we just sit with them both as being companion works of fiction. I do wonder, as readers, if we ascribe too much emphasis to what is truth in fiction. A novel is a work of fiction. Should every writer be expected to then, after releasing a novel, explain to the public which parts are true and which parts are made up? That Miles Franklin was harassed about this to the point of feeling compelled to write an entire second novel for the sole purpose of communicating that her first novel was, indeed, a novel, is something that I find quite absurd. And even still, to this day, one of the biggest points of examination across the two novels, is the enduring question of which one is more autobiographical?

Sybylla Penelope Melvyn is a young woman representative of the quest for early twentieth century Australian women who wanted more: options, the vote, to be able to work, to be able to live alone, to not marry, to have opinions, to have male friends, to choose to be childless. Both novels explored this, but to me, My Career Goes Bung did so in a way that was more explicit. This may be a result of an older Miles Franklin putting her revisionist stamp onto it. When she reworked My Career Goes Bung, she was no longer a sixteen-year-old girl with big ideas and an even bigger yearning. She was a woman of independence, who had travelled, written for years, worked, and was an active feminist. My Career Goes Bung is sharp and satirical, particularly in its evaluation of city dwellers and the ‘society set’. It openly makes fun of people and never takes itself too seriously. How much of herself Miles Franklin put into Sybylla is ultimately of little interest to me. I am more interested in how brilliantly she encapsulated the feelings and yearnings of so many other young Australian women, how much of them is in Sybylla, still now, almost 130 years later. My Career Goes Bung is the perfect companion to My Brilliant Career, and I saw my younger self mirrored in Sybylla, a country girl at sea in the city, with everything from the way you dress to the way you speak interrogated and greeted with the ever original: “From the country, are you?”

“I am a bush girl too and staying here on purpose to meet you. I was born on a station up the country. I just love your book. It’s ripping. You’ve said all the things we all think but did not know how to express.”

Thank you Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin for giving us Sybylla Penelope Melvyn, version one and two. This piece of yourself who is also a piece of so many of us, those bookish, scribbling, ambitious country girls who set off for the city to become independent women, she lingers within us and moves through the generations still, thriving and igniting.

Sources:

My Brilliant Career & My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin, HarperCollins Publishers (Angus & Robertson), 2013

My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin, Project Gutenburg Australia, 2015

My Career Goes Bung, Wikipedia, (Accessed February 2026)

A Stalled Sequel, Dr Rachel Franks, State Library NSW, 2021

Theresa Smith is the former historical fiction editor and team coordinator of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. She is a current contributor to the AWW Early Years project. Her main reading interests are classics, translations, literary and historical fiction, with a particular focus on elevating women’s voices in literature.

Instagram @tesssmithwrites