Physical description

Hard cover book. My Career Goes Bung
Author: Miles Franklin
Publisher: Georgian House
Date: 1946
Further Information: Cover has a pale, mottled watercolour-like wash in cream, sky blue, lime green and yellow, with a thin blue edge.
Central panel has a deep red rectangle holding the title in large, cream-white, rounded slab-style lowercase letters, stacked on three lines: “my / career / goes / bung!”. The “g” characters have distinctive looped tails.. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with the typed text PAT FIC FRA
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Flyleaf has a stamp from Warrnambool Public Library
Front loose end paper has a stamped in red ink "Cancelled"

Summary

My Career Goes Bung is a satirical novel by Miles Franklin, billed as a sequel to My Brilliant Career. It was written in 1902–04 and revised around 1935, but it was not published until 1946. It is better read as a companion than as a true sequel. The narrator, Sybylla Melvyn, is a different version of the heroine and is the person who wrote the earlier book. In this work, Sybylla, a young woman in her late teens, writes a novel from her own bush experience. She is then drawn into the Sydney literary and social set, which the book satirises, including through a mock affair with a thinly disguised Banjo Paterson. The novel ends with Sybylla keeping her independence while her persistent suitor is packed off to Queensland to look after his property. Reviewers in 1946 praised it as lively and funny, with delicious satire.