First published in 1901, this Australian classic recounts the live of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn.

Trapped on her parents’ outback farm, she simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. For Sybylla longs for a more refined, aesthetic lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing, but most of all to do great things.

Suddenly her life is transformed. Whisked away to live on her grandmother’s gracious property, she falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. And soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a brilliant career.

The popularity of the novel in Australia and the perceived closeness of many of the characters to her own family and circumstances caused Franklin a great deal of distress and led her to withdrawing the novel from publication until after her death.