"A few months before I left Australia I got a letter from the bush signed Miles Franklin, saying that the writer had written a novel, but knew nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and advise. Something about the letter, which was written in a strong original hand, attracted me, so I sent for the MS., and one dull afternoon I started to read it. I hadn''t read three pages when I saw what you will no doubt see at once--that the story had been written by a girl. And as I went on I saw that the work was Australian--born of the bush. I don''t know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book--I leave that to girl readers to judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me, and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia--the truest I ever read. I wrote to Miles Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw her before leaving Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely twenty-one yet, and has scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life. She has lived her book, and I feel proud of it for the sake of the country I came from, where people toil and bake and suffer and are kind; where every second sun-burnt bushman is a sympathetic humorist, with the sadness of the bush deep in his eyes and a brave grin for the worst of times, and where every third bushman is a poet, with a big heart that keeps his pockets empty. "

This book has been donated to the General Literature VBB organized by bookstogive.

This book has been removed from the General Literature VBB and is available again.

This book has been donated to the Goodwill.