Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990). Courtesy the Lur Thematic Encyclopedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Born	Lawrence George Durrell February 27 1912(1912-Template:MONTHNUMBER-27) Jalandhar, British India
Died	November 7 1990(1990-Template:MONTHNUMBER-07) (aged 78) Sommières, France
Occupation	biographer; poet; playwright; novelist
Nationality	British
Period	1931–1990
Notable work(s)	The Alexandria Quartet
Influences Henry Miller, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Friedrich Nietzsche, Constantine P. Cavafy, T.S. Eliot, George Seferis
Influenced Julio Cortázar, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Swan, David Gascoyne, Dylan Thomas, M.G. Vassanji, Roger Zelazny

Lawrence George Durrell (February 27, 1912 - November 7, 1990), was an expatriate English poet, novelist, dramatist, and travel writer.

Life

Overview

Durrell resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan. It has been posthumously suggested that Durrell never had British citizenship, though more accurately, he became defined as a non-patrial in 1968, due to the amendment to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. Hence, he was denied the right to enter or settle in Britain under new laws and had to apply for a visa for each entry. His most famous work is his tetralogy, the Alexandria Quartet.

Youth and education

Durrell was born in Jallandhar, British India, the eldest son of Indian-born British colonials Louisa and Lawrence Samuel Durrell. His earliest school was St. Joseph's College, North Point, Darjeeling.

At the age of 11, he was sent to England where he briefly attended St. Olave's Grammar School before being sent to St. Edmund's School, Canterbury. His formal education was unsuccessful and he failed his university entrance examinations, but he began seriously writing poetry at the age of 15 and his debut collection of poetry, Quaint Fragment, was published in 1931.

Adult life

On January 22, 1935, he married Nancy Isobel Myers, the first of his 4 marriages. Durrell was always unhappy in EnglandTemplate:Fact and in March of that year he persuaded his new wife, his mother, and his siblings (including brother Gerald Durrell, later to be a major British wildlife conservationist and popular writer), to move to the Greek island of Corfu, where they might live more economically and escape both the English weather and stultifying English culture—what Durrell called "the English death."

In the same year, Durrell's debut novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, was published by Cassell. Around this time, he chanced upon a copy of Henry Miller's 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer, and wrote to Miller, expressing intense admiration for his novel. Durrell's letter sparked an enduring friendship and mutually critical relationship that spanned 45 years. The two got on well, as they were exploring similar subjects, and Durrell's next novel, Panic Spring, was heavily influenced by Miller's work, and after that The Black Book abounded with "four-letter words... grotesques,... [and] its mood equally as apocalyptic" as Tropic.

In Corfu, Lawrence and Nancy lived together in bohemian style. For the first few months, the couple lived with the rest of the Durrell family in the Villa Anemoyanni at Kontokali. In early 1936, however, Durrell and Nancy moved to the White House, a fisherman's cottage on the shore of Corfu's northeastern coast at Kalami, then a tiny fishing village. Durrell's friend Theodore Stephanides was a frequent guest, and Henry Miller stayed at the "White House" in 1939. This period of his sojourn on Corfu is somewhat fictionalised in a lyrical account in Prospero's Cell, which may be instructively compared with the accounts of the Corfu experience published by Gerald Durrell, notably in My Family and Other Animals, and the rest of the so-called Corfu Trilogy. Gerald describes Lawrence as living permanently with his mother and siblings—Nancy is not mentioned at all—whereas Lawrence's account makes only a few references to just one of his siblings, Leslie and does not mention that his mother and other two siblings were also resident on Corfu. The accounts do cover a few of the same topics; for example, both Gerald and Lawrence describe the roles played by the Corfiot taxi driver Spiro Amerikanos and the Greek doctor, scientist and poet Theodore Stephanides in their lives on Corfu. In Corfu he became friends with Marie Aspioti, with whom he cooperated in the publication of Lear's Corfu.

In August, 1937, Lawrence and Nancy travelled to the Villa Seurat in Paris, to meet Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Together with Alfred Perles, Nin, Miller, and Durrell "began a collaboration aimed at founding their own literary movement. Their projects included 'The Shame of the Morning' and the 'Booster,' a country club house organ that the Villa Seurat group appropriated for their own artistic . . . ends." 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 World War II , Durrell's mother and brothers returned to England, while he and Nancy remained on Corfu. In 1940, he and Nancy had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. After the fall of Greece, Lawrence and Nancy escaped via Crete to Alexandria in Egypt. The marriage was already under strain, however, and Durrell and Nancy separated in 1942, with Nancy taking baby Penelope to Jerusalem.

During his years on Corfu, Durrell had made notes for a book about the island, but it was only in Egypt towards the end of the war, that he was finally able to write it. In the book, Prospero's Cell, Durrell described Corfu as "this brilliant little speck of an island in the Ionian," with waters "like the heartbeat of the world itself."

During World War II, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassies, first in Cairo and then Alexandria. It was in Alexandria that he met Eve (Yvette) Cohen, a Jewish woman and native Alexandrian, who was to become his model for the character Justine in the Alexandria Quartet. In 1947, after his divorce from Nancy came through, Durrell married Eve Cohen and in 1951 they had a daughter, Sappho Jane, named after the legendary Ancient Greek poet Sappho. (Sappho Durrell committed suicide by hanging in 1985.)

In May, 1945, Durrell obtained a posting to Rhodes. The Dodecanese had been taken by Italy from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire in 1912, during the Balkan Wars. With the Italian surrender in 1943 their erstwhile German allies took over most of the islands and held onto them as besieged fortresses until the war's end. Mainland Greece was at that time locked in civil war, and so the Dodecanese came under a temporary British military government pending sovereignty being handed over to Greece in 1947, as war reparations from Italy.

Durrell set up house in the little gatekeeper's lodge of an old Turkish cemetery, just across the road from the building used by the British Administration (today the Casino in Rhodes new town), where his co-habitation with Eve Cohen could be discreetly ignored by his employer, while remaining close enough to be within the perimeter security zone of the main building.

From this period comes his book "Reflections on a Marine Venus." a lyrical celebration of the island, in which, Durrell tends to avoid more than a passing mention of the troubled times.

In 1947, Durrell was appointed director of the British Council Institute in Córdoba, Argentina, where for the next eighteen months he gave lectures on cultural topics. He returned to London with Eve in the summer of 1948, around the time that Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia broke ties with Joseph Stalin's COMINFORM, and Durrell was posted to Belgrade, Yugoslavia where he was to remain until 1952. This sojourn gave him material for his book White Eagles over Serbia (1957).

File:LDurrellHouseRhodes.JPG

Lawrence Durrell's home in Rhodes from 20 May 1945 until 10 April 1947

In 1952, Eve had a breakdown and was hospitalized in England. Durrell moved to Cyprus with Sappho Jane, buying a house and taking a position teaching English literature at the Pancyprian Gymnasium to support his writing, followed by public relations work for the British government there during agitation for union with Greece. Durrell left Cyprus in August, 1956, after problems on the island and his British government position led to him being made a target of assassination attempts.

Durrell separated from Eve Cohen in 1955, and was married again in 1961, to another Alexandrian Jewish woman, Claude-Marie Vincendon, whom he met on Cyprus. Durrell was devastated when Claude-Marie died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973, to a French woman, Ghislaine de Boysson, whom he divorced in 1979.

Durrell settled in Sommières, a small village in Languedoc, France, where he purchased a large house standing secluded in its own extensive walled grounds on the edge of the village. Here 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."  In 1974, Durrell was the Andrew Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology.

Other works from this period are "Sicilian Carousel," a celebration of that island, "The Greek Islands," and "Caesar's Vast Ghost," which is mainly about Provence, France.

Durrell suffered from emphysema for many years. He died of a stroke at his house in Sommières in November, 1990. His lifelong friend Alan G. Thomas donated a collection of books and periodicals associated with Durrell to the British Library, which is maintained as the distinct Lawrence Durrell Collection.

Alan Thomas also acted as editor for an anthology of additional writings, letters and poetry, "Spirit Of Place," which contains much that supplements Durrell's own books.

Diplomatic service

Durrell also spent several years in the service of the Foreign Office. He was senior press officer to the British Embassies in Athens and Cairo, press attache in Alexandria and Belgrade, director of the British Institutes in Kalamata, Greece, and Córdoba, Argentina. He was also director of Public Relations in the Dodecanese Islands and on Cyprus. Durrell later refused a Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, because he felt his "conservative, reactionary, and right-wing" political views might be a cause for embarrassment. Durrell's works of humour Esprit de Corps and Stiff Upper Lip are about life in the diplomatic corps, particularly Serbia.

He claimed to have disliked both Egypt and Argentina, although nowhere near as much as he disliked Yugoslavia.

Writing

Novels

Durrell's earliest novel of note, The Black Book: An Agon, was heavily influenced by Miller and was published in Paris in 1938. The mildly pornographic work only appeared in Britain in 1973. In the story, the main character Lawrence Lucifer struggles to escape the spiritual sterility of dying England, and finds Greece's warmth and fertility.

In 1957, he published Justine, the earliest part of what was to become his most famous work, the Alexandria Quartet. Justine, Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958) and Clea (1960), deal with events before and during World War II in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. The earliest 3 books tell essentially the same story but from different perspectives, a technique Durrell described in his introductory note in Balthazar as "relativistic." Only in the final part, Clea, does the story advance in time and reach a conclusion. The Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960) impressed critics by the richness of its style, the variety and vividness of its characters, its movement between the personal and the political, and its exotic locations in and around the city which Durrell portrays as the chief protagonist: "The city which used us as its flora — precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!" The Times Literary Supplement review of the Quartet stated: "If ever a work bore an instantly recognizable signature on every sentence, this is it." There was some suggestion that Durrell might be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but this did not materialize.

Poetry

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. And one of the most enjoyable." He goes on to describe Durrell's poetry as "Always beautiful as sound and syntax. Its innovation lies in its refusal to be more high-minded than the things it records, together with its handling of the whole lexicon of language."

Recognition

In 1954, Durrell became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Durrell wrote about his time in Cyprus in Bitter Lemons, which won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1957.

His novel, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness, , from Durrell's Avignon Quintet,received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1974; and his novel Constance, or Solitary Practices from the same series, which portrays France under the German occupation, was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1982.

Publications

Poetry

• Quaint Fragments (with Cecil Jeffries). London: Cecil Press, 1931.
• Ten Poems. London: Caduceus Press, 1932.
• Transition: Poems. London: Caduceus Press, 1934.
• A Private Country: Poems. London: Faber, 1943.
• Cities, Plains and People (1946)
• On Seeming to Presume: Poems. London: Faber, 1948.
• Collected Poems. London: Faber, 1960; New York: [[E.P. Dutton}Dutton]], 1960.
• Penguin Modern Poets 1 (by Lawrence Durrell, Elizabeth Jennings, & R.S. Thomas). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1962.
• The Ikons, and other poems. London: Faber, 1966; New York: Dutton, 1967.
• On the Suchness of the Old Boy. London: Turret Books, 1972.
• Lifelines: Four poems. privately published, printed at Tragara Press, 1974.
• Selected Poems: 1953–1963 Edited by Alan Ross). London: Faber, 1977.
• Collected Poems, 1931–1974 (edited by James A. Brigham). London: Faber, 1979; New York: Viking, 1980.
• Selected Poems of Lawrence Durrell (edited by Peter Porter). London: Faber, 2006.

Plays

• Bromo Bombastes: A fragment from a laconic drama (as "Gaffer Peeslake"). London: Caduceus Press, 1933.
• Sappho: A play in verse. London: Faber, 1950.
• An Irish Faustus: A Morality in Nine Scenes. London: Faber, 1963; New York: Dutton, 1964.
• Acte: A play. London: Faber, 1965; New York: Dutton, 1966.

Novels

• Pied Piper of Lovers. London: Cassell, 1935.
• Panic Spring: A romance (as "Charles Norden"). London: Faber, 1937; New York: Covici, 1937.
• The Black Book: An agon. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938
  • also published as The Black Book: A novel. London: Faber, 1959; Paris: Olympia Press, 1959.
• Cefalu: A novel. London: Editions Poetry London, 1947
  • also published as The Dark Labyrinth. London: Harborough, 1958; London: Faber, 1961.
• White Eagles Over Serbia. London: Faber, 1957; New York: Criterion, 1957.

Alexandria Quartet

• Justine. London: Faber, 1956; New York: Dutton, 1957.
• Balthazar. London: Faber, 1957; New York: Dutton, 1958.
• Mountolive: A novel. London: Faber, 1958; New York: Dutton, 1958.
• Clea. London: Faber, 1959; New York: Dutton, 1960.
• The Alexandria quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea. London: Faber, 1960; New York: Dutton, 1961.

The Revolt of Aphrodite

• Tunc: A novel. London: Faber, 1968; New York: Dutton, 1968.
• Nunquam: A novel. London: Faber, 1970; New York: Dutton, 1970.
• The Revolt of Aphrodite. London: Faber, 1974.

The Avignon Quintet

• Monsieur; or, The prince of darkness: A novel]]. London: Faber, 1974.
  • published in U.S. as Monsieur. New York: Viking, 1975.
• Livia; or, Buried alive. London: Faber, 1978; New York: Viking, 1978.
• Constance: or, Solitary practices. London: Faber, 1982; New York: Dutton, 1982.
• Sebastian; or, Ruling passions]].London: Faber, 1983; New York: Viking, 1984.
• Quinx; or, The ripper's tale. London: Faber, 1985; New York: Viking, 1985.
• The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Costance, Sebastian, Quinx. London: Faber, 1992.

Short fiction

• Esprit de Corps: Sketches from diplomatic life. London: Faber, 1957; New York: Dutton, 1957.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Life among the diplomats. London: Faber, 1958; New York: Dutton, 1959.
• Sauve Qui Peut. London: Faber, 1966; New York: Dutton, 1967.
• The Best of Antrobus (illustrated by Nicholas Bentley). London: Faber, 1974.
• Antrobus Complete. London: Faber, 1985; London & Boston: Faber, 1986.

Non-fiction

• A Key to Modern British Poetry. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952; London: P. Nevil, 1952.
• Bitter Lemons (memoir). London: Faber, 1967
  • also published as Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean island. Open Road Media, 2012.
• The Plant Magic Man. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1973.
• The Big Supposer: A dialogue with Marc Alyn (translated from French by Francine Barker). London: Abelard-Schuman, 1973; New York: Grove Press, 1973.
• A Smile in the Mind's Eye. London: Wildwood House, 1980; London: Granada, 1982; New York: Universe Books, 1982.
• Lawrence Durrell: Conversations (with Earle G. Ingersoll). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998.

Travel

• Prospero's Cell: A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra [Corfu] (1945; republished 2000) (ISBN 0-571-20165-2)
• Reflections on a Marine Venus: A companion to the landscape of Rhodes. London: Faber, 1953.
• Bitter Lemons (1957; republished as Bitter Lemons of Cyprus 2001)
• Blue Thirst. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1975.
• Sicilian Carousel: Adventures on an Italian Island. London: Faber, 1977.
• The Greek Islands. London: Faber, 1978; New York: Viking, 1978.
• Caesar's Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence. London: Faber, 1990; New York: Arcade, 1990.
• The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader (edited by Clint Willis). New York: Carroll & Graaf, 2004.

Translated

• Emmanouēl D Rhoidēs, Pope Joan. London, D. Verschoyle, 1954; New York: Dutton, 1960.
• George Seferis, The King of Asine, and other poems (translated by Durrell, Bernard Spencer, and Nanos Valaoritis). London: John Lehmann, 1948.
• Six Poems From the Greek of Sikelianós and Seféris. Rhodes, Greece: 1946.

Edited

• Wordsworth (selected by Durrell), Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1973.
• New Poems 1963: A P.E.N. anthology of contemporary poetry. London: Hutchinson, 1963
  • publishedin U.S. as New Poems, 1963: A British P.E.N. anthology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964.
• A Henry Miller Reader. New York: New Directions, 1959.
• The Best of Henry Miller. London: Heinemann, 1960.

Letters

• Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence (1962) edited by George Wickes). London: Faber, 1963.
• Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel (1969) edited by Alan G. Thomas
• Literary Lifelines: The Richard Aldington—Lawrence Durrell Correspondence (edited by Ian S. MacNiven & Harry T. Moore). London: Faber, 1981; New York: Viking Press, 1981.
• "Letters to T.S. Eliot" in Twentieth Century Literature 33:3 (1987), pp. 348–358.
• The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935–80 (edited by Ian S. MacNiven). London: Faber, 1980; New York: New Directions, 1980.
• Letters to Jean Fanchette, 1958-1963 (edited by Jean Fanchette). Paris: Two Cities Etc., 1988.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Lawrence Durrell Nemea

"The Ballad of The Good Lord Nelson" by Lawrence Durrell (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

• List of British poets

References

Lawrence Durrell Conon in Exile and other poems

• Bowker, Gordon. Through the Dark Labyrinth: A Biography of Lawrence Durrell. New York: St. Martin's P, 1997.
• Chamberlin, Brewster. A Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell. Corfu: Durrell School of Corfu, 2007.
• Durrell, Lawrence. The Big Supposer: An Interview with Marc Alyn. New York: Grove P, 1974.
• Haag, Michael. Alexandria: City of Memory. London and New Haven: Yale U P, 2004. [Intertwined biographies of Lawrence Durrell, E.M. Forster and Constantine Cavafy in Alexandria.]
• Haag, Michael. Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860–1960. Cairo and New York: The American U of Cairo P, 2008. [Includes an introduction on the historical, social and literary significance of Alexandria, and extensively captioned photographs of the cosmopolitan city and its inhabitants, including Durrell and people he knew.]
• MacNiven, Ian. Lawrence Durrell—A Biography. London: Faber and Faber, 1998.
• Todd, Daniel Ray. An Annotated, Enumerative Bibliography of the Criticism of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and his Travel Works. New Orleans: Tulane U, 1984. [Doctoral dissertation]
• Ingersoll, Earl. Lawrence Durrell: Conversations. Cranbury: Ashgate; 1998.
• Alexandre-Garner, Corinne, ed. Lawrence Durrell Revisited : Lawrence Durrell Revisité. Confluences 21. Nanterre: Université Paris X, 2002.
• Alexandre-Garner, Corinne, ed. Lawrence Durrell: Actes Du Colloque Pour L'Inauguration De La Bibliothèque Durrell. Confluences 15. Nanterre: Université Paris-X, 1998.
• Alexandre-Garner, Corinne. Le Quatuor D'Alexandrie, Fragmentation Et Écriture : Étude Sur Lámour, La Femme Et L'Écriture Dans Le Roman De Lawrence Durrell. Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature 136. New York: Peter Lang, 1985.
• Begnal, Michael H., ed. On Miracle Ground: Essays on the Fiction of Lawrence Durrell. Lewisburg: Bucknell U P, 1990.
• Cornu, Marie-Renée. La Dynamique Du Quatuor D'Alexandrie De Lawrence Durrell: Trois Études. Montréal: Didier, 1979.
• Fraser, G. S. Lawrence Durrell: A Study. London: Faber and Faber, 1968.
• Friedman, Alan Warren, ed. Critical Essays on Lawrence Durrell. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987.
• Friedman, Alan Warren. Lawrence Durrell and "The Alexandria Quartet": Art for Love's Sake. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1970.
• Herbrechter, Stefan. Lawrence Durrell, Postmodernism and the Ethics of Alterity. Postmodern Studies 26. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999.
• Hoops, Wiklef. Die Antinomie Von Theorie Und Praxis in Lawrence Durrells Alexandria Quartet: Eine Strukturuntersuchung. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1976.
• Isernhagen, Hartwig. Sensation, Vision and Imagination: The Problem of Unity in Lawrence Durrell's Novels. Bamberg: Bamberger Fotodruck, 1969.
• Kaczvinsky, Donald P. Lawrence Durrell's Major Novels, or The Kingdom of the Imagination. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna U P, 1997.
• Lampert, Gunther. Symbolik Und Leitmotivik in Lawrence Durrells Alexandria Quartet. Bamberg: Rodenbusch, 1974.
• Lillios, Anna, ed. Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World. London: Associated U Presses, 2004.
• Moore, Harry T., ed. The World of Lawrence Durrell. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1962.
• Morrison, Ray. A Smile in His Mind's Eye: A Study of the Early Works of Lawrence Durrell. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005.
• Pelletier, Jacques. Le Quatour D'Alexandrie De Lawrence Durrell. Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Paris: Hachette, 1975.
• Pine, Richard. Lawrence Durrell: The Mindscape. Corfu: Durrell School of Corfu, revised edition, 2005.
• Pine, Richard. The Dandy and the Herald: Manners, Mind and Morals From Brummell to Durrell. New York: St. Martin's P, 1988.
• Raper, Julius Rowan, et al, eds. Lawrence Durrell: Comprehending the Whole. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1995.
• Rashidi, Linda Stump. (Re)constructing Reality: Complexity in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.
• Ruprecht, Walter Hermann. Durrells Alexandria Quartet: Struktur Als Belzugssystem. Sichtung Und Analyse. Swiss Studies in English 72. Berne: Francke Verlag, 1972.
• Sajavaara, Kari. Imagery in Lawrence Durrell's Prose. Mémoires De La Société Néophilologique De Helsinki 35. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1975.
• Sertoli, Giuseppe. Lawrence Durrell. Civilta Letteraria Del Novecento: Sezione Inglese—Americana 6. Milano: Mursia, 1967.
• Potter, Robert A., and Brooke Whiting. Lawrence Durrell: A Checklist. Los Angeles: U of California, Los Angeles Library, 1961.
• Thomas, Alan G., and James Brigham. Lawrence Durrell: An Illustrated Checklist. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1983.

Fonds

• Lawrence Durrell Library (Nanterre – France) Contains 2500 documents related to Durrell
• Lawrence Durrell collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections
• Lawrence Durrell Papers, 1933–1971 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center

External links

Poems

• Alexandria
• Lawrence Durrell at PoemHunter (4 poems).

Books

• Lawrence Durrell at Amazon.com
• Critical Materials on Lawrence Durrell: A Bibliographic Checklist
• Lawrence Durrell Bibliography from Inventions of Spring
• Lawrence Durrell at YouTube

About

• Lawrence Durrell at NNDB
• Andrewski, Gene & Mitchell, Julian (Autumn-Winter 1959–1960). "Lawrence Durrell, The Art of Fiction No. 23". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4720/the-art-of-fiction-no-23-lawrence-durrell. 
• Featured author: Lawrence Durrell, New York Times
• Andrewski, Gene; Mitchell, Julian (23 April 1959). "Lawrence Durrell: The Art of Fiction No. 23 (interview)". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4720. Retrieved 1 July 2006. 
• Gifford, James (30 July 2004). "Lawrence Durrell: Text, hypertext, intertext". Agora: An Online Graduate Journal. http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/agora/2004/v3n01/index.htm. Retrieved 14 October 2007. 
• Gifford, James (30 November 2001). "Forgetting A Homeless Colonial: Gender, religion and transnational childhood in Lawrence Durrell's Pied Piper Of Lovers". Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies. http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/giffor.htm. Retrieved 14 October 2007. 
• "Lawrence Durrell in the ambiguous white metropolis": an essay on the Alexandria Quartet from TLS, August 27, 2008.
• Lawrence Durrell at Find a Grave

Etc.

• The International Lawrence Durrell Society Official website
• Durrell 2012: The Lawrence Durrell Centenary Centenary event website and Durrell Journal
• The Durrell School of Corfu School dedicated to the works and lives Lawrence and Gerald Durrell
• Durrell Celebration in Alexandria