35 Facts About Martin Boyd

Martin Boyd's work drew heavily on his own life and family, with his novels frequently exploring the experiences of the Anglo-Australian upper and middle classes.

Martin Boyd's writing was deeply influenced by his experience of serving in World War One.

Martin Boyd's friends saw him as "[c]harming, generous, frivolous and funny".

Martin Boyd was sensitive and private; a complex man who struggled with his identity as an Anglo-Australian, as an expatriate writer and with religious beliefs.

Martin Boyd did not believe in the class superiority which many of his critics levelled at him; was a loyal family man and friend, yet never found a lasting romantic relationship of his own.

Martin a Beckett Boyd was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 10 June 1893.

Martin Boyd was the youngest son of Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie a Beckett who were both established painters.

Martin Boyd lived in the Melbourne suburb of Sandringham until he was 13 when the family moved permanently to the family farm in Yarra Glen, Victoria.

Martin Boyd had a love of books and writing from an early age, but he was colour blind.

Martin Boyd became the only writer in his ancient family amongst painters and artists.

Martin Boyd fondly remembered his childhood years at Yarra Glen.

Martin Boyd did not see out the year but this was the beginning of a lifelong, but never resolved, investigation of the place of religious devotion in his life.

Martin Boyd returned to Australia after World War One but found he no longer fitted in.

Wearying of that world too and with the death of his brother Penleigh in 1923, Martin Boyd again turned to religion joining an Anglican Franciscan community in Dorset.

Martin Boyd survived financially on one hundred pounds a year from his parents, a short stint as acting editor of The British Australasian, and sporadic payments from his writing.

Martin Boyd was a modest, free-spirited bachelor, adept at finding comfortable lodging.

Martin Boyd had found his vocation and between 1925 and 1949 he published ten novels, a volume of autobiography and a children's story.

Martin Boyd delayed a return to Australia in the hope he could return a success.

Martin Boyd's motivation was not to be a disappointment to his family and he was plagued by doubts about his own achievements.

Martin Boyd moved to Rome in 1957 where he wrote the Langton tetralogy, frequently considered his finest work, the second autobiography, Day of My Delight, the travel story Much else in Italy and a light novel The Tea-Time of Love.

Martin Boyd suffered from ill health for the last decade of his life.

Martin Boyd died of cancer on 3 June 1972 just days after being received into the Catholic Church.

Martin Boyd is buried near the poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley in Rome's Protestant 'English cemetery'.

The Martin Boyd family had considerable influence which extended not only throughout the state of Victoria, where Martin Boyd grew up, but extended to the rest of Australia and parts of Europe.

Martin Boyd was one such individual who greatly contributed to Australian Literature.

One of the defining characteristics of Martin Boyd was his reputation as a social enigma.

Martin Boyd later expressed his disdain for the adoption of purely materialistic values and the self-importance that riddled the aristocracy at the time.

In 1928 Martin Boyd won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for his novel The Montforts.

The novel, written under the pseudonym Martin Mills, is based on the history of Boyd's a Beckett ancestors.

Martin Boyd wrote extensively, with early poems, autobiographical books, an essay pamphlet on modern youth, an extensive list of novels, five short stories, and articles on varying subjects, to his name.

Martin Boyd is most renowned for his novels, which were inspired, according to many critics, by his own life and family experiences.

Martin Boyd tended to concentrate on the niceties and absurdities of social exchanges, instead of a greater concern with universal problems of human life.

Martin Boyd's works do reflect the two major preoccupations of his own life: a spiritual and religious concern; and, the disillusionment with and displacement from the two countries he was affiliated with, England and Australia.

Martin Boyd is clearly preoccupied with the way qualities of character and patterns of behavior recur in families.

Martin Boyd's novels are now published in the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics series, and he is described as "rubbing shoulders" with authors such as Franz Kafka.