General Correspondence

Containers:

Box 1-2

Component identifier:

Series 1

Content Summary:

This series is housed in Folders 1-11 (please note: Folder 3 has been since transferred to MS 6810 (Box 6).

This consists mainly of letters from Martin Boyd and covers the period 1919-1972. The majority were written during the years he spent in Rome. His correspondents include members of the Boyd family, Joan and Daryl Lindsay, and several Australian writer's and literary critics. There is a large number of letters to friends in Britain, e.g. Joan Burnett, Pamela Gill, Quintin Geering, and Hertha Hay. A letter of particular interest is one written in 1919 to Frank Mann, a friend from Boyd's R.A.F. days, referring to Lady Headley (Barbara Baynton), whom Boyd knew in London during and after the First World War. The series includes Boyd's correspondence with William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1942-1944, concerning the bombing of German cities during the Second World War. A letter to Joan Lindsay about the book she inspired, Nuns in Jeopardy and one to her sister, Marian (Mim) Pollak, commenting on Picnic at Hanging Rock are worth special mention for the light they cast on the literary relationship between these two novels.

In addition there are extracts copied from Boyd's letters to his sister, Helen a'Beckett Read.

Names:

Martin Boyd

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