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''When Blackbirds Sing'' (1962) is the last novel by Australian writer
Martin Boyd Martin à Beckett Boyd (10 June 1893 – 3 June 1972) was an Australian writer born into the à Beckett– Boyd family, a family synonymous with the establishment, the judiciary, publishing and literature, and the visual arts since the early 19t ...
. It is also the last in the author's "Langton Tetralogy" (which comprises ''
The Cardboard Crown ''The Cardboard Crown'' (1952) is a novel by Australian writer Martin Boyd. It is the first in the author's "Langton Tetralogy" (which comprises ''The Cardboard Crown'', ''A Difficult Young Man'', ''Outbreak of Love (novel), Outbreak of Love'' a ...
'', '' A Difficult Young Man'', ''
Outbreak of Love ''Outbreak of Love'' is a 1981 Australian miniseries about Melbourne society just before World War I. *Ed. Scott Murray, ''Australia on the Small Screen 1970-1995'', Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p. 220 * * References External links''Outbreak of Love ...
'' and ''When Blackbirds Sing'').Austlit - ''When Blackbirds Sing'' by Martin Boyd
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Plot summary

During World War I Dominic Langton leaves his wife and child behind in Australia and travels to England to enlist in the army. While there he comes to know his English family roots for the first time and is initially seduced by the show of class and privilege. But his experiences in the war gradually change his attitudes, and he finally returns to Australia a very changed man.


Reviews

Maurice Dunlevy, in a re-examination of the whole tetralogy after it had been re-issued in 1971 by Lansdowne Press, wrote: "Throughout his career Boyd had been wrestling with the conflict between writing a family saga in a form that might be called a schematic fable — the Jamesian novel of total relevance. The sweep required by the saga did not adapt easily to the narrow, more rigid unity of the aesthetically patterned novel and the final attempt to write the, saga as a sequence of self-contained novels was hampered by the necessity to convey the amplitude of the saga in the confines of schematic pattern. "When Blackbirds Sing" seems to be more successful because it throws out almost the whole Langton family and concentrates on the troubled consciousness and feelings of a single member, Dominic Langton, who is the hero not of a saga wedded to the novel of psychological realism, but of the latter alone." Reviewing the 2014 release from Text in ''Southerly'' Shaun Bell notes: "Difficult to define in terms of genre and uneasily placed in canonical formations, the expected and characteristic nostalgia in Boyd’s treatment of a belated anglo-Australianism aligned with British colonialism is curiously absent. The finale of four books, the novel conversely sees Boyd at his most politically engaged and focused on his own time...By the end of Boyd’s Langton novels, Dominic becomes something of a tragic figure. Grappling with surges of violent emotion, traumatising visions of the past, homesickness, ennui, and depression, Dominic is once again in danger of being torn apart by his warring emotions."


Note

Text Publishing Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along wit ...
re-issued the novel in 2014 as part of its Text Classics series with an introduction by
Brenda Niall Dr Brenda Mary Niall (born 25 November 1930) is an Australian biographer, literary critic and journalist. She is particularly noted for her work on Australia's well-known Boyd family of artists and writers. Educated at Genazzano FCJ College, ...
.Text Publishing – ''When Blackbirds Sing : Text Classics'' by Martin Boyd
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See also

*
1962 in Australian literature This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1962. Major publications Books * James Aldridge – ''A Captive in the Land'' * Thea Astley – ''The Well Dressed Explorer'' * Martin Boyd ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:When Blackbirds Sing 1962 Australian novels Novels by Martin Boyd Abelard-Schuman books