[Editor: This review of Love Redeemed (by William Baylebridge) is from the “General Literature and Fiction” column, published in The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.), 18 January 1936.]
“Love Redeemed,” by William Baylebridge (The Tallabila Press, Sydney).
The sonnet is not a popular vehicle of verse, and any poet who publishes a sonnet sequence is under two serious handicaps: The dislike of the average reader for sonnets, at all events in the mass; and the inevitable comparison with great sonneteers of the past.
But Mr. William Baylebridge, an old Brisbane man who lives in Sydney, has published a volume of 123 sonnets, entitled “Love Redeemed,” which is worthy of a high place in the literature of the sonnet because of its mastery of music, charm of rhythm, and beauty of expression. The 123 sonnets make up really one poem, the theme being the various moods of a love affair, the story opening out in the sequence until, towards the end, come death and bereavement.
Mr. Baylebridge has certainly written a very rich procession of sonnets in which he has explored the avenues of love and grief. The whole love drama needs to be read with care and thought, because some of the sonnets that do not appear to be as deftly woven into the pattern as others are really used to indicate a change in colouring.
Unquestionably Mr. Baylebridge has given readers a string of sonnet pearls of a quality never before produced in Australia.
Source:
The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.), 18 January 1936, p. 20 (column 2)
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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