Lawrence Durrell Biography and latest books by Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 at Jalandhar in Colonial India. He was born to Lawrence Samuel Durrell and Louisa Durrell. He was the older brother of legendary writer, Gerald Durrell. He studied at St. Joseph’s College, Darjeeling. He was sent to England and he studied at St. Olave’s Grammar School and St. Edmund’s School in Canterbury. He started writing poetry at 15; in 1931, he published his first collection titled Quaint Fragment.

In 1935, Durrell coaxed his wife, mother, and his siblings to move to Corfu in Greece. He was never too fond of the English weather and called it the ‘English Death’. He wrote and published the Pied Piper of Lovers. It was at this time that he read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer  and wrote to the latter congratulating him on the novel. They struck a friendship that lasted 45 years. His book titled Panic Spring was inspired by Henry Miller’s writings.

Durrell and his wife Nancy Isobel Myers went to Paris where they met Anais Nin and Arthur Miller. He wrote Prospero’s Cell describing Corfu’s beauty. The Black Book: An Agon was his first novel of prominence. During the Second World War, his mother and siblings moved back to England while he and Nancy remained in Corfu and had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. With the advance of the Nazis to Greece, they escaped to Alexandria via Crete. Nancy and he separated and she took Penelope with her. He worked as a press attaché to the British Embassies in Cairo and Alexandria. It was at this time that he met Eve Cohen whom he married.

Durrell went to work in Rhodes and then he went to work in Argentina as director of the British Council Institute in Cordoba. He was posted at Belgrade in former Yugoslavia where he wrote White Eagles over Serbia. In 1957, he began his work on the Alexandria Quartet and he published Justine, the first of his books in this series. The three others: Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea followed. He authored The Alexandria Quartet, Pied Piper of Lovers, Panic Spring, White Eagles over Serbia, The Revolt of Aphrodite, The Avignon Quintet, Prospero\'s Cell: A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra, Reflections on a Marine Venus, Bitter Lemons, Blue Thirst, Sicilian Carousel, The Greek Islands, and Caesar\'s Vast Ghost. His poetry collections are: Quaint Fragments, Ten Poems, A Private Country, Transition, Cities, Plains and People, On Seeming to Presume, Selected Poems, The Ikons, and The Suchness of the Old Boy. He also wrote plays such as An Irish Faustus: A Morality in Nine Scenes, Acte, Bromo Bombastes, and Sappho.

Lawrence died in 1990 in Sommieres.