Description
Bee Miles: Australia’s famous bohemian rebel, and the untold story behind the legend
by Rose Ellis
The untold story of the uncompromising and fearless woman who captivated mid-20th century Australia with her spectacular acts of defiance.
Bee Miles was a truly larger-than-life character. Famous for being outrageous in public, or, as she said, living ‘recklessly’, she shocked and intrigued cities and towns across Australia. But she was no ordinary wanderer.
Born into a wealthy family, Bee moved in Sydney’s literary and artistic circles in the 1920s and 1930s before she took up residence on the streets. A consummate performer and a perceptive critic, she caught the public’s imagination with her spectacular acts of defiance, emerging majestically from the surf with a knife strapped to each thigh, stopping a country train in its tracks, hitchhiking across remote Australia and drawing large city crowds with her Shakespeare recitations. She was once even voted more famous than the Prime Minister. She was also repeatedly incarcerated in prisons, confined to mental hospitals and treated brutally by a succession of authority figures, starting with her father.
Bee constantly defied conventional expectations of female behaviour. The public found her captivating and fragments of her story have been told again and again in many forms. Until now, no-one has uncovered the real story behind the colourful legend. This first full biography offers a fascinating glimpse into a dark side of Australia’s history.
Shortlisted for the 2024 National Biography Award.
Judges’ comments: Bee Miles is a biography that, like its subject, often shocks the reader, in the best way possible. Miles achieved notoriety during her lifetime for her eccentricity, rebelling against the gendered expectations of her class and the social mores that governed Australian life in the first half of the twentieth century. Known for her public performances and acts of cultural defiance, this work balances its account of Miles’ life against the tragedies that underscored it. This biography employs the highest standard of scholarship and writes with the same verve that Miles lived. At the same time, the work never understates the oppressive circumstances that Miles navigated, highlighting the matrix of patriarchal and state power that led to her frequent confinement in psychiatric facilities, and the criminalisation of poverty and homelessness. Ellis paints a portrait not only of a woman who has come to stand in as a voice for the marginalised, but as a person in her own right. It is a tender, raucous account.
Table of Contents
Preface
1 On the battlements
2 Trouble on the North Shore line
3 Wanting in control
4 Constraint
5 Flight
6 Adventures in Bohemia
7 Playing the game
8 Jumping the rattler
9 Grand schemes
10 Blind Ambition
11 Fame and Infamy
12 A tenant of the city
13 Transport wars
14 Love and the nation
15 To sleep: perchance to dream
16 None but fools would keep
Acknowledgements
List of Bee Miles’ Unpublished Manuscripts
Notes
Index
Book Details
Published: 29th August 2023
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 336
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Dimensions (cm): 23.5 x 15.5 x 2.5
ISBN: 9781761069130
Alison Bashford, author of An Intimate History of Evolution –
These pages dance with details of a forgotten Australia, in which the sane were in asylums, the rich were on the left and clever Bee Miles dominated the city of Sydney.
Lucy Frost, historian and author –
The remarkable tale of an eternal vagabond, Bohemian to her core.
Mandy Sayer, award-winning author –
A thrilling ride through the life of one of Australia’s most gifted yet misunderstood characters. I adored it!
Craig Munro, author of Literary Lion Tamers –
A brilliant rollercoaster of a book.