Lawrence Durrell

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Lawrence George Durrell (February 27, 1912 – November 7,1990) was a British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan. His most famous work is The Alexandria Quartet, a tetralogy.

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Life and work

He was born in India and, at the age of eleven, was sent to attend school in England — a country in which he was never happy and which he left as soon as possible.

His first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, was published in 1935. In that year Durrell, his wife Nancy, his mother, and his siblings (including brother Gerald Durrell, later to be a major British wildlife conservationist and popular writer) moved to the Greek island of Corfu. His mother and other siblings returned to England in 1939 due to World War II. Lawrence remained. After the fall of Greece, Lawrence Durrell escaped via Crete to Alexandria in Egypt, where he wrote about Corfu and their life on "this brilliant little speck of an island in the Ionian" in the poetic Prospero's Cell.

In August 1937 he and Nancy had arrived at the Villa Seurat in Paris, on a sort of pilgrimage to meet an idol of his, Henry Miller (of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn fame). The two got on well as they had similar subjects at the time, Durrell's The Black Book abounded with "four letter words... grotesques,... [and] its mood [as] equally as apocalyptic" as "Tropic". Together with Anaïs Nin and Alfred Perles, Miller and Durrell "began a collaboration aimed at founding their own literary movement. Their projects included 'The Booster,' a country club house organ the Villa Seurat group appropriated for their own artistic...ends."Template:Ref

Durrell separated from his wife in 1942, and became peripatetic, living for some time in Egypt, Rhodes, Argentina, and Greece, and finally settling in the south of France at a house near Sommières. He was married four times in all.

In 1947 he went to Córdoba, Argentina, where for the next eighteen months he gave lectures on cultural topics for the British Council.Template:Ref He returned to London in the summer of 1948, around the time that Marshal Tito broke ties with Stalin's Cominform, and Durrell was posted to Belgrade.Template:Ref

He died of a stroke at his house in Sommières.

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Major works

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Novels

  • Pied Piper of Lovers 1935
  • Panic Spring (pseudonym: Charles Norden) 1937
  • The Black Book (1938: published in the UK on January 1, 1977 by Faber and Faber)
  • The Dark Labyrinth (Cefalu) 1947
  • White Eagles Over Serbia 1957
  • The Alexandria Quartet (Justine 1957, Balthazar 1958, Mountolive 1958, Clea 1960)
  • The Revolt of Aphrodite (Tunc 1968, Nunquam 1970)
  • The Avignon Quintet (Monsieur 1974, Livia 1978, Constance 1982, Sebastian 1983, Quinx 1985)
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Travel

  • Prospero's Cell: A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra 1945; republished 2000 (ISBN 0571201652)
  • Reflections on a Marine Venus 1953
  • Bitter Lemons 1957
  • Blue Thirst 1975
  • Sicilian Carousel 1977
  • The Greek Islands 1978
  • Caesar's Vast Ghost 1990
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Poetry

  • Selected Poems: 1953–1963 Edited by Alan Ross 1964
  • Collected Poems: 1931–1974 Edited by James A. Brigham 1980
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Drama

  • Sappho 1950
  • An Irish Faustus 1963
  • Acte 1964
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Humor

  • Esprit de Corps 1957
  • Stiff Upper Lip 1958
  • Sauve Qui Peut 1966
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Letters and essays

  • A Key to Modern British Poetry (1952)
  • Spirit of Place (1969) edited by Alan G. Thomas
  • Literary Lifelines: The Richard Aldington—Lawrence Durrell Correspondence (1981) edited by Ian S. MacNiven and Harry T. Moore
  • A Smile in the Mind's Eye (1982)
  • The Durrell-Miller Letters: 1935–80 (1988) edited by Ian S. MacNiven
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References

  • Dearborn, Mary V., The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller.
  • Interview with Marc Alyn, published in Paris in 1972, translated by Francine Barker in 1974; reprinted in Earl G. Ingersoll, Lawrence Durrell: Conversations, Associated University Presses, 1998. ISBN 0-8386-3723-X.
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Notes

  1. Template:Note Dearborn, op. cit. page 192 and picture insert captions
  2. Template:Note Alyn, op. cit. Ingersoll, page 138
  3. Template:Note Alyn, op. cit. Ingersoll, page 139
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External links

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