The Greek Islands (39 page)

Lawrence Durrell was born in 1912 in India, where his father was an English civil engineer. As a boy he attended the Jesuit College at Darjeeling, and he was later sent to St Edmund’s School, Canterbury. His first authentic literary work was
The
Black Book
, which appeared in Paris in 1938 under the aegis of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. ‘In the writing of it I first heard the sound of my own voice …’ he later wrote. The novel was praised by T. S. Eliot, who published his first collection of poems,
A Private Country
, in 1943. The first of the island books,
Prospero’s Cell
, a guide to Corfu, appeared in 1945. It was
followed
by
Reflections on a Marine Venus
, about Rhodes.
Bitter
Lemons
, his account of life in Cyprus, won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize in 1957. Subsequently he drew on his years in Greece for
The Greek Islands
. Durrell’s wartime sojourn in Egypt led to his masterpiece,
The Alexandria Quartet
, which he completed in southern France, where he settled permanently in 1957. Between the
Quartet
and
The Avignon Quintet
he wrote the two-decker
Tunc
and
Nunquam
, now united as
The Revolt of Aphrodite
. His oeuvre includes plays, a book of criticism,
translations
, travel writings (
Spirit of Place
),
Collected Poems
, a
children’s
adventure, and humorous stories about the diplomatic corps. His correspondence with his lifelong friend Henry Miller has also been published.
Caesar’s Vast Ghost
, his reflections on the history and culture of Provence, including a late flowering of poems, appeared a few days before his death at his home in Sommières in 1990.

NOVELS

The Black Book

The Dark Labyrinth

White Eagles Over Serbia

The Alexandria Quartet

Justine

Balthazar

Mountolive

Clea

The Revolt of Aphrodite

Tunc, Nunquam

The Avignon Quintet

Monsieur, Livia, Constance,

Sebastian, Quinx

TRAVEL

Prospero’s Cell

Reflections on a Marine Venus

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

The Greek Islands

Caesar’s Vast Ghost

Spirit of Place

POETRY

Collected Poems 1931–74

HUMOUR

Antrobus Complete

CORRESPONDENCE

The Durrell–Miller Letters 1935–80

BIOGRAPHY

Lawrence Durrell: A Biography

by Ian MacNiven