The chances are that you already know Sybylla: you might have read My Brilliant Career, the novel published in 1901, or seen Gillian Armstrongâs film from 1979. The work, and its author, Stella Maria Sarah âMilesâ Franklin, have left behind a complicated legacy. Franklin was just 16 when she wrote the tumbling, breathless, bold proto-feminist text, and it was not published under a male pseudonym as she had wished (or the title she had wished, with a question mark at the end). Writer and poet Henry Lawson, who submitted the novel to his publishers, revealed Franklinâs secret in a preface he wrote instead. Locals took her writing as a comment on her family and neighbours; the book ended up being pulled from publication until after Franklinâs death.