Description
This ‘family biography’ by award-winning writer Brenda Niall traces the emergence of an extraordinary artistic tradition. She places the Boyds in their historical and personal contexts, tells the interwoven stories of their brilliant careers, and analyses the shaping influences on their lives.
Most remarkable is the story, told here for the first time, of heiress Emma Mills—a convict’s daughter who in 1855 married William à Beckett, son of Victoria’s first Chief Justice, and as the family’s much-loved matriarch, promoted the artistic careers of her family.
Niall’s narrative shifts the spotlight from one family member to another, showing the dramatic changes in the family fortunes by moving between a sequence of Boyd family houses in Australian and Europe—a Wiltshire manor house, a farm in Yarra Glen, a pottery in Murumbeena, Arthur Boyd’s Suffolk retreat, David Boyd’s olive grove in the South of France and, finally, Bundanoon near Nowra—the homestead that Arthur Boyd gave to the Australian people.
The Boyds is based on family papers, letters and diaries and a wide range of interviews. Moving from 1840s Melbourne to the present day, it covers a vast territory while reading with the ease of a novel.
ISBN – 9780522853841
Publisher – Melbourne UP
Brenda Niall is one of Australia’s best-known writers Brenda Niall is the author of four award-winning biographies. She has an AO for services to Australian literature, and an honorary D.Litt. from Monash as well as degrees from the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and Monash University. As Reader in English at Monash University, she gave courses on Australian literature, American literature, biography and autobiography. She has held visiting fellowships at the University of Michigan, Yale University and the Australian National University; and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She now writes full-time, and is a frequent reviewer for the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Book Review.
239 A'Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria, 3000 
03 9326 9288 
office@historyvictoria.org.au 
Office & Library: Weekdays 9am-5pm
Book Reviews Reviews
There are no reviews yet.