COCKATOOS A Story of Youth and Exodists by Brent of Bin Bin  AKA Miles Franklin ___________________________________________________________   ABOUT THIS BOOK Cockatoos (1954) is the third novel, chronologically, in the family saga Miles Franklin wrote under the alias Brent of Bin Bin.  In Australia cockatoos  come in great flocks to scratch seed from the ground and Franklin uses the term, and its diminutive, cockies, derogatorily, to describe poor dirt-farmers scratching a living from the soil. Cockatoos was re-written from the unpublished On the Outside Track which Franklin had written in 1903.  For Cockatoos the setting moves from the NSW high country of the first two novels in the saga to the plains south of Goulburn, and the small farming community of Oswald’s Ridges, representing Thornford where Franklin grew up. The period is the end of the C19th, years of drought and of colonial enthusiasm for the Boer War, when Franklin was in her late teens.  The  novel covers the interactions of maybe 20 young people – in their late teens and early 20s – children of farmers, scions of the early squatting families and visitors from up the country, and it is difficult to keep track of their names, let alone their relative social standings, religion – protestant or Catholic, and all their second-cousin type connections to the ‘first families’ of the earlier novels. Ostensibly, this is a novel of who is keen on whom, keenly observed and interesting in its own right, but many a student of Miles Franklin will be more interested in Cockatoos as a new view of her adolescence. Franklin had a strong but unusual contralto voice and she discusses at length the loss of her (potential) career as an opera singer. Cockatoos is an important work. It is both a perceptive view of country life in NSW at the turn of the C20th and a lightly-fictionalized memoir of the adolescence of one of our best early authors. Hardback with price-clipped dust jacket in good physical condition the book block is stitched, tight, square and well bound with no noticeable printing / publishing imperfections. The dust jacket has some insect damage to the fore edges and the covers. The pictures listed are of the actual book and form part of our sale description - so don’t miss the opportunity to check them out! Please check pictures and don't hesitate to ask if you have any queries!   145