Martin Boyd A Life by Brenda Niall

Martin Boyd A Life

by Brenda Niall

Melbourne University Press, 1989, colour and b/w photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 0522842682

Fine Condition, previous owners award plate on front end paper, minor edge and shelf wear, otherwise as new

'Brenda Niall draws on a wide variety of sources: diaries, memoirs, letters, interviews with Boyd's family and his friends in Australia and England, and in Italy where he spent his last years.  in a fine study of a man and his work she re-creates the Melbourne in which Boyd grew up, just before World War I, tracing his development as a writer during his restless expatriate years. Boyd's was a complex personality: witty, generous, sociable, yet deeply reserved.  He looked for his 'home of the spirit' in many places: an Anglican monastery, London's West End clubland, a Cambridge village, and old family house in Harkaway, Victoria, and among English expatriates in Rome.'