Q&A with Kerrie Davies - author of Miles Franklin Undercover

Kerrie Davies, author of Miles Franklin Undercover, reveals the surprising discoveries she made about Miles Franklin's missing years.

We chat with Kerrie Davies, author of Miles Franklin Undercover. Read our interview below!

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A&U:  What inspired you to write about these lost years of Miles Franklin’s life?

KD: I’m a former journalist so I’m interested in women’s journalism, particularly the style of journalism called ‘gonzo’, when a journalist spends a lot of time with a story subject and sometimes participates. I did a lot of ‘gonzo’ when I was a magazine journalist myself! It is more associated with macho journalists like Hunter S Thompson, but there is a history of women doing it, especially around the turn of the 20th century to break into male dominated journalism.

So, when I came across a fleeting reference to Miles working as a servant for a year to gather ‘literary material’ for a book about servant conditions, I was fascinated. This was a quite different Miles Franklin to the novelist and name of literary awards that we know.

A&U: What research did you undertake to find out more about Miles’ life during this period?

KD: My research concentrated on the years from the release of MBC – 1901, to 1915. I prefer looking through a specific social window of a person (such as Henry Lawson’s wife being a single parent for my previous book A Wife’s Heart ) than the traditional ‘cradle to grave’ biography of a whole life that you are supposed to follow as a biographer. So it is a part biography – the real life sequel to My Brilliant Career.

I also wanted to recreate Miles’ personality, eventful life in this time, and her Edwardian world, so I recreated scenes rather than write a traditional biography. To do that, I relied on Miles two-volume unpublished manuscript, ‘When I was Mary-Anne, A Slavey’ in the State Library of NSW, that also included unseen extracts from her diary from the year 1903-1904. Drawing from letters and site visits, I dived into the lives of her employers where possible, and their homes, and her family and celebrity friends  like Rose Scott, A.B Paterson, and Jack London. They become satellite characters too.

I also drew from her other manuscripts she drafted or published in 1901-1915, and traditional biographies of Miles, such as Jill Roe’s Stella Miles Franklin to build extra details.

For world-building, I used TROVE, the digital newspaper archive in Australia, and later, international archival newspapers, to find the small, telling details that bring her world, and the people that she knew, to life. I also spent time in Chicago (spoiler alert). Where I’ve speculated to fill in gaps, I’ve made notes at the end of the book.

A&U: What was the most surprising thing you uncovered about Miles in writing this book?

KD: She is much more than the name of an award. She was brave, ambitious, and fierce, like Judy Davis captured so well as Sybylla Melvin in the adaptation of My Brilliant Career by Gillian Armstrong. The book was closely based on Miles, as much as she denied it.

Miles was witty, flirtatious, and adventurous at a time when women were supposed to be demure and deferential. She was very anxious too, although hid it well in public. The book’s title connects to her time undercover as a servant, but it also relates to her personality and obscurity in these years.

A&U: After all your research and time writing this book, what do you most admire about Miles Franklin?

KD: Her courage and resilience. She always took the riskier choice rather than bow to the status quo. I dedicate the book to all those like her. She put herself in the unknown, and at times that was really hard for her, particularly so in the Edwardian era in which she lived.

She was always true to herself and her ambition to write, just like Sybylla in My Brilliant Career. 

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Miles Franklin Undercover

by Kerrie Davies

After the success and celebrity of her coming of age novel My Brilliant Career, published when Miles Franklin was only 21, she disappeared. This is the story of the decade that made her second career as a fearless advocate for working women.

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