| Dearest Idol | |
| Author: | Martin Boyd |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Publisher: | Bobbs-Merrill, Indiana, USA |
| Release Date: | 1929 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 284 pp |
| 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".[1]
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.
In her PhD thesis titled "Deconstructing Martin Boyd : Homosocial Desire and the Transgressive Aesthetic",[2] 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."[3]
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.[4]