Kerrie Davies, Miles Franklin Undercover The little-known years when she created her own brilliant career, Allen & Unwin, November 2025.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work but was constantly wanting to be reassured about where elements of accuracy and imagination lay. As always must be the case with biographies when the subject or circumstances contrive to preserve some privacy, speculation is a legitimate tool. One of the most interesting facets of reading about events that cannot be authenticated is following the author’s acknowledgment of this and their process for composing conclusions. All biographies must include elements of speculation and imagination, after all, conversations are not always recorded – and how influenced by such recording and therefore questionably authentic are these - and thoughts can only be developed in the author’s imagination, and I would have liked to see more recognition and discussion of this aspect of the work. However, the acknowledgements and bibliography, together with notes for each chapter, were useful as were references to the value of the unpublished manuscript about Franklin’s domestic work. Also, Davies’ generous recognition of Miles Franklin’s other biographers and work on her topic is valuable.

In Part 1 Davies provides a wealth of information about Miles Franklin’s relationships with her family and other writers in her early years. This is such a great read – poets studied in Australian schools leap to life alongside the unfolding of Miles Franklin’s vagaries, enthusiasms, and penetrating views about the way in which she wanted to live. ‘Live’ is a potent word here – Miles did not want to wilt in a marriage, remain known for only one successful novel, succumb to the comfort of familiarity. That familiarity, Stillwater, their property, and her family did not provide her the sustenance she demanded despite the strong emotional connection that Davies subtly weaves through the lives she eventually lived in America and London. The pull of the life of family and home is well depicted and the struggle in coming to terms with the realities of remaining unmarried and trying and failing with her writing is poignant.

Part 2 begins with a new chapter in Miles’ life, her life as Sarah, undercover as a domestic worker, compiling information for another book. Her political activities as well as her desire to be published again culminated in this period, moving from being Rose Scott’s ‘darling girl’ to the less than darling in various households. The ‘domestic problem’, spoken about in drawing rooms and at dining tables in wealthy homes, becomes a cruel and disturbing reality when seen through the eyes of the person undertaking the domestic work. In these chapters the unpublished manuscript (for unpublished it was, deemed too likely to provoke legal action) is the basis of some marvellous insight into the work, the relationships between servants, and the relationships between servants and their employers.

In Part 3 ‘Stella’, rather than Miles, is aboard the steamer Ventura bound for America. Here the world of women’s political activity becomes that of Miles Franklin, and the story of her writing and political endeavour is satisfying. She writes for journals and papers, she is loved by her friends, she can be political on behalf of women, and most importantly, she has remained single. All the emotional ties to her family and friends, Australia, the wider world, and her writing can be felt at the ending of Part 3, ensuing that the passionate woman that Davies has written about is the picture that remains. Using The Coda to cover Miles Franklin’s time in London, her death in 1954 and the establishment of the Miles Franklin Literary Award is clever device that does not detract from the purple petals with which part 3 ends.

Miles Franklin Undercover provides a thoroughly readable and emotional journey towards knowing more about Miles Franklin, the writer and political activist, her writing and the other people who appear in this work. I enjoyed the journey.

Many Australians know and admire Miles Franklin. Her famous book, ‘My Brilliant Career’ (1901) is a national treasure. That novel follows the experiences of the rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn and her journey to independence in a patriarchal society. Her book later became a movie and since the 1950s there is an annual award in her name to celebrate Australian literary excellence.

Therefore it was with great anticipation that Kerrie’s book has just been released this month. In this real-life sequel to ‘My Brilliant Career’, she uncovers a little-known period in Miles life drawing on a never-before published manuscript and diary extracts of Miles year undercover as a servant, intimate correspondence with poet Banjo Paterson, and archival sources from Australia and Chicago.

When the original book was published it earned very little and her later novels were rejected. Two years after publication Miles was broke and disappeared. This is a tale of her continued strength as she was determined to still be the heroine of her own story. Kerrie does an amazing job in capturing Miles voice in this creative bio fiction of her life until 1915.

This book follows Miles Franklin’s life from 1901 (when My Brilliant Career was published) to 1915. During this time she spends a year working as a servant in a few different places, the book she writes is unprintable as many of the rich people she mentions are clearly identifiable! A few years later she travels to the US. She arrives in San Francisco in 1906 two weeks after a massive earthquake has destroyed the city. From there she travels to Chicago and becomes involved in women’s trade Union activities and other women’s rights issues. This was such a great read, I really enjoyed reading about this fascinating and fiercely independent woman.

What an absolute treat. Miles Franklin, the lost years is a beautifully researched book that unpacks the life of such an important Australian writer. There are , of course, many biographies of Stella Miles Franklin but none that seem so completely in sync with who she was and the times that she lived through. Her success, whilst immediate with My Brilliant Career was not always easy after that. Her relationship with Henry Lawson and other literary figures reads as if told by Miles herself. She was determined to not to marry and passionate to support the rights of women in so many ways in Australia, the United States and London. Her Undercover work as a servant in Sydney and Melbourne are fascinating documents of the treatment of women in the early 1900s. Her little known time in America is poignant as she carts her unpublished manuscripts in her case as she moves around finally finding work in editing a Labour Journal. Her own family’s tragedy with the death of her sister , a letter sent to her contains such terrible news are all beautifully portrayed by Kerrie Davies. It ends all too suddenly with a coda. I wish there had been more.

This novel contains lots of fascinating facts and details about a specific time in Miles Franklin's life. Davies has obviously done her research and has turned everything she has read and learnt into a fictionalised account of Franklin's life. Even though it include many extracts and lines from real-life letters and journals, this is biofiction not a biography or non-fiction,

The mismatch between my expectations for a literary biography and the biofiction to hand affected the way I read this book, which I probably would have enjoyed a whole lot more if I had started it with 'biofiction' or even 'creative nonfiction' in mind.