Abstract
‘The city and the country’ is one of the great themes in Australian history, and the ‘drift’ of rural youth to the coastal cities has been one of its leading sub-themes, especially in the first half of the twentieth century when the exodus was greatest. Miles Franklin coined the term ‘exodists’ to describe those, like herself and the heroine of her autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career, Sybylla Melvyn, who forsook the country for the city. Contemporaries, who placed rural virtues at the centre of national life, often bemoaned the surrender of talented young people to the attractions of city life; but the ‘brilliant careers’ of Franklin, and her biographer Jill Roe, remind us of another theme: the city’s promise of emancipation from the narrow possibilities of rural life.This article has been peer-reviewed.
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