Lawrence Durrell

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials... Lawrence Durrell, 78, Author, Is Dead Lawrence Durrell, the British novelist and poet whose sensuous and exotic fiction, especially in the "Alexandria Quartet" novels, made him a sort of prophet of the sexual revolution of the 1960's, died Wednesday at his home in Sommieres, France. He was 78 years old.

The cause of death was not disclosed, but a family member said that Mr. Durrell, who suffered from emphysema, had been ailing for a week. Mr. Durrell's last book, "Caesar's Vast Ghost: A Portrait of Provence," a nonfiction book about the French region, was shipped to book stores only days ago by its American publisher, Arcade Publishing.

He held a series of government positions from 1942 to 1957, in places such as Cyprus, Alexandria, and Rhodes; after that, he retired to the south of France, where he spent his last 35 years writing.

He was friend and collaboratorto the American author Henry Miller, the Spanish author Anais Nin, and the Austrian author Alfred Perles. Though born to British parents, and though he spent some years of his education in England, and though he is considered a British author, he despised England, and did not consider himself British; he considered himself a cosmopolitan writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Durrell http://www.lawrencedurrell.org/bio.htm http://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawrence-Durrell http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/24/alexandria-quartet-law...

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Lawrence George Durrell was born Feb. 27, 1912, in Jullundur, India, of English and Irish parents; his Irish-born father, an engineer, had gone to the subcontinent to work on the construction of the country's first railway.

The boy was educated in India and then at St. Edmund's School, Canterbury, in England. He failed to gain admission to Cambridge University, and held a number of brief jobs, including that of jazz pianist in a London nightclub. He published a few poems and, in 1935, a novel about life in Bloomsbury called "Pied Piper of Lovers." He was one of four children. His younger brother, Gerald, is a naturalist and author whose book "My Family and Other Animals" chronicled the eccentricities of the Durrells.

The same year Mr. Durrell married the first of his three wives, Nancy Myers, and moved with her, his mother and siblings to the island of Corfu, where he wrote his second novel, "Panic Spring," which was published in 1937. Because of the failure of his first novel, his publishers suggested that he use a pseudonym for his second effort; the name he chose was Charles Norden. https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/durrell-obit.html