Lawrence (George) Durrell - Life and work, Major works
British novelist and poet, born in Darjeeling, NE India. He studied at Canterbury, and eloped with his future wife to Paris, where he met Henry Miller and began to write novels. He taught English in Athens, then served in the Foreign Office in Cairo, Athens, and Belgrade, settling in Cyprus (1953). He first made his name with Prospero's Cell (1945), followed by the cosmopolitan multi-love story comprising the Alexandria Quartet (195760): Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea. A series of five novels commenced in 1974 with Monsieur, followed by Livia (1978), Constance (1982), Sebastian (1983), and Quinx (1985). He also wrote several books of poems, short stories, and travel books.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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| Born: |
February 27, 1912 Jalandhar, India |
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| Died: |
November 7, 1990 Sommières, France |
| Occupation(s): | Biographist; novelist |
| Nationality: | British |
| Writing period: | 1931 - 1990 |
| Website: | Lawrence Durrell |
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.
Life and work
Durrell was born in Jalandhar, India, the son of Indian-born British colonials. Although his formal education was unsuccessful and he failed his university entrance examinations, Durrell had started writing poetry at the age of fifteen: his first collection, Quaint Fragment, was published in 1931.
On January 22, 1935, Durrell married Nancy Isobel Myers, the first of his four marriages. Later that year Durrell, 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. The two got on well as they had similar subjects at the time: Durrell's The Black Book abounded with "four-letter words... Together with Alfred Perles, Nin, Miller and Durrell "began a collaboration aimed at founding their own literary movement. They also started the Villa Seurat Series in order to publish Durrell's Black Book, Miller's Max and the White Phagocytes, and Nin's Winter of Artifice, with Jack Kahane of the Obelisk Press as publisher.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, his mother and other siblings returned to England, while Durrell remained on Corfu.
During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassies, first in Cairo and then Alexandria.
Durrell separated from Nancy in 1942. 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, where he was to remain until 1952.
In 1957, he published "Justine", the first part of what was to become his most famous work, The Alexandria Quartet. Durrell was married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon;
Durrell settled in Sommières, a small village in Provence, France, from where he wrote The Revolt of Aphrodite, comprising "Tunc" (1968) and "Nunquam" (1970), and The Avignon Quintet, which attempted to replicate the success of The Alexandria Quartet and revisited many of the same motifs and styles to be found in the earlier work. Although it is frequently described as a quintet, Durrell himself referred to it as a "quincunx". The Avignon Quintet was on the whole considered less successful than The Alexandria Quartet.
Durrell's poetry has been overshadowed by his novels. Peter Porter, in his introduction to a Selected Poems, writes of Durrell as a poet: "one of the best of the past hundred years. He goes on to describe Durrell's poetry as "always beautiful as sound and syntax.
Durrell suffered from emphysema for many years: he died of a stroke at his house in Sommières in November 1990.
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