{{Short description|Book by Martin Boyd}} {{Use Australian English|date=September 2016}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}} {{Infobox book| | name = Dearest Idol | title_orig = | translator = | image = File:Dearest_Idol.png | caption = | author = Martin Boyd | cover_artist = | country = Australia | language = English | series = | genre = Fiction | publisher = Bobbs-Merrill, Indiana, USA | release_date = 1929 | media_type = Print | pages = 284 pp | isbn = | preceded_by = The Madeleine Heritage | followed_by = Scandal of Spring }}
'''''Dearest Idol''''' (1929) is a novel by Australian writer Martin Boyd. It was published under the author's pseudonym "Walter Beckett".<ref>[http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C146515 Austlit - ''Dearest Idol'' by Martin Boyd]</ref>
==Story outline== The novel is set in Europe and follows the story of a 19-year-old boy named Tony Dawson (called "Boysie" by his by Aunt Matilda). Tony and Matilda have moved to London, and Tony has left school and gone to work in a well-known bank. While working there he meets Boris and the novel explores the friendship that develops between them.
==Critical reception== In her PhD thesis titled "Deconstructing Martin Boyd : Homosocial Desire and the Transgressive Aesthetic",<ref>[https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/2760/1/01Front.pdf "Deconstructing Martin Boyd : Homosocial Desire and the Transgressive Aesthetic" by Jenny Blain, University of Sydney, Department of English, 1998]</ref> Jenny Blain notes in her introduction that "the novel's predominant focus [is] on narcissism, egoism and homosexual possibility. Tony is a monster of vanity and self-love; he also has an infantile fixation on adulation and power."<ref>[https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/2760/2/02Whole.pdf "Introduction : A wilful obliteration?" by Jenny Blain, University of Sydney, Department of English, 1998, p166]</ref>
==See also== * 1929 in Australian literature
==Notes== Martin Boyd was not acknowledged as the author of this book until this was unearthed in 1977 by Brenda Niall of Monash University and Terence O'Neill of Melbourne University.<ref>[http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/records-archives/assets/docs/pdf/monash-reporter/1977-10-04.pdf "Scholars find a lost Boyd novel", ''Monash Reporter'', 4 October 1977]</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{Martin Boyd}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dearest Idol}} Category:Novels by Martin Boyd Category:1929 Australian novels Category:Bobbs-Merrill Company books