1949) The Langton tetralogy which, though not published as a series during his lifetime, is now referred to as a collective: The Cardboard Crown (London, England: Cresset Press, 1952) A Difficult Young Man (London, England : Cresset Press, 1955) Outbreak of Love (London, England: John Murray, 1957) When Blackbirds Sing (London, England: Abelard-Schuman, 1962) Why They Walk Out (Rome, M. Boyd, 1970) Unpublished works The Shepherd of Admetus Bitter Sauces Autobiography A Single Flame (London, England: J. M. Dent, 1939) Day of My Delight: An Anglo-Australian Memoir (Melbourne, Victoria: Lansdowne, 1965) Subject matter While writing most of his novels in England, Boyd's novels frequently focus on the contrasting and conflicting realities of upper-class English and Australian societies. He tended to concentrate on the niceties and absurdities of social exchanges, instead of a greater concern with universal problems of human life. Boyd's works do, however, 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. This is referred to by Kathleen Fitzpatrick as "the Anglo-Australian malaise". The novels explore the importance of class and social standing in England and Australia that families such as the Boyds experienced. The novel Lucinda Brayford, is a good example of this preoccupation. Biographer and critic, Brian McFarlane, writes, "...Boyd is clearly preoccupied with the way qualities of character and patterns of behavior recur in families. Sometimes, indeed, his stress on hereditary influences seems so bluntly asserted as to rob the impulses and motivations of his characters of some of their interests". Responses to Boyd's work vary from outright hostility, to others describing his novels as "alone in Australian Literature reflect[ing] the lives of an alienated British elite…". Fitzpatrick writes, "In spite of very great gifts, which included a prose style of great flexibility and grace, Martin Boyd, the man without a country and the writer without a subject has remained a gifted amateur rather than a professional novelist", while McFarlane describes Boyd's virtues as "minor but real". 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. In his own time, Boyd's novels received few reviews in the Australian newspapers, and little critical attention between 1928 and 1949. While Boyd's first three novels did not sell well and led