Maggie McKellar

I just have this sort of vision of this small, bustling, powerful, self-confident woman who is

was determined to leave a mark on Australian literature.

Yes, I think she has that effect on people.

And I love that there's a whole new generation of readers coming to My Brilliant Career.

I think that people will be startled that though it's so old-fashioned and so of its time, it also has a vibrancy and a compulsion to keep reading.

And part of it is this frustration with this young woman, but also an attraction to how fiercely physical she is.

Yes, absolutely.

And he ushers her into the literary world.

Both Sabella and Miles, which I would have to say are quite tricky to tease apart at times.

Oh, I agree, Cassie.

So many of her diary entries and letters are about dealing with family who are absolutely aghast.

And, of course, she sets the district ablaze, you can imagine it, with everybody trying to work out who everybody is.

in the book, so that becomes an obsession, I think, and that she would have an affront because, of course, it's told as if it's a true story.

So, yeah, I think your take on her having a brush with celebrity and the double-edged sword that that is is so accurate.

And she became obsessed with pseudonyms and sleights of hand and hiding where she was writing from.

And I think one of the fascinating things about her is that she wrote, one of her pseudonyms was Brent Binbin.

And she wrote nearly all of the Brent of Binbin novels, which are set sort of exclusively in pastoral Australia, from the British Library, which I think is just part of her, the contradictions of her.

I think so, and I think that it's so interesting how we've talked about class and racism and how Miles' feminism comes up against that because in lots of ways it's a study of how women's entrapment

was played out across every class of woman in the book.

No woman in the book is free.