The Cardboard Crown: Text Classics

by Martin Boyd, Brenda Niall (Introduction)

Overview

Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either.

At the centre of this scintillating and immensely readable novel is Alice Verso, whose unexpected marriage to Austin Langton not only brings financial stability to the Langtons but founds an Anglo-Australian dynasty. But when her grandson finds her diaries and begins to uncover her story he chances on an intricate web of deception and reveals the complex fate of his family over three generations.

This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

This edition features an introduction by one of Australia's best-known and award-winning biographers, Brenda Niall.

Martin Boyd was born in Switzerland in 1893. He was brought to Australia when he was six months old and where his family of painters, sculptors, architects and writers was to make an unparalleled contribution to Australian cultural life. Boyd divided his time between Australia and England but in 1957 moved to Rome where he died in 1972. The Cardboard Crown is the first novel in his Langton quartet, the work for which he is best known and which is loosely based on his family.

Brenda Niall is one of Australia's foremost biographers. She is the author of four award winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for 'services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic'. She frequently reviews for the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Book Review.

textclassics.com.au

'A spirited and highly accomplished novel, done with the most engaging liveliness and intelligence.' Times

'A rueful, cheerfully savage novel...lit with unearthly fires and enchantments.' New York Times

'The grace and wit of his best writing, the subtlety with which he captures social nuances, and his placing of intimate family dramas against a broader social background, make Boyd quite individual as an Australian novelist.' Australian

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781921961717
Publisher:	The Text Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/24/2012
Series:	Langton Quartet , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	641 KB

About the Author

Martin a' Beckett Boyd was born in Switzerland in 1893 into a famous family. His brothers Merric and Penleigh were to become artists too. Merric's son Arthur was to become a famous painter, and Penleigh's son Robin became an architect and wrote The Australian Ugliness.

After leaving school, Martin Boyd enrolled in a seminary, but he abandoned this vocation and began to train as an architect. With the outbreak of World War I, he sailed for England where he served in the Royal East Kent Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps. Boyd eventually settled in England after the war.

His first novel, Love Gods, was published in 1925. Three years later The Montforts appeared, under the pseudonym Martin Mills. Following the international success of Lucinda Brayford in 1946 Boyd decided to return to Australia where he wanted to restore his grandfather's house, but by 1951 he was back in London. In the coming decade he was to write the Langton Quartet: The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, When Blackbirds Sing.

In 1957 he went to Rome, where he lived and continued to write until his death in 1972.
Brenda Niall is one of Australia’s foremost biographers. She is the author of five award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the National Biography Award for MANNIX. Brenda has degrees from the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and Monash University. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for ‘services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic’. She frequently reviews for the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Book Review.