Editing Lawrence Durrell (section)

==Adult life and prose writings==
===First marriage and Durrell's move to Corfu===
On 22 January 1935, Durrell married art student Nancy Isobel Myers (1912–1983), with whom he briefly ran a photographic studio in London.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Michael|last=Haag|title=Only the City is Real: Lawrence Durrell's Journey to Alexandria|journal=Alif|volume=26|year=2006|pages=39–47}}</ref> It was the first of his four marriages.<ref>{{cite book | last=MacNiven| first=Ian S.| title=Lawrence Durrell: A Biography| publisher=Faber and Faber|location=London| year=1998| isbn=0-571-17248-2}} p. xiii.</ref> Durrell was always unhappy in England, and in March of that year he persuaded his new wife, and his mother and younger siblings, to move to the Greek island of Corfu. There they could live more economically and escape both the English weather, and what Durrell considered the stultifying English culture, which he described as "the English death".<ref>Anna Lillios, "Lawrence Durrell", in ''Magill's Survey of World Literature'', volume '''7''', pp. 2334–2342; Salem Press, Inc., 1995</ref>

That same year Durrell's first novel, ''[[Pied Piper of Lovers]]'', was published by [[Orion Publishing Group|Cassell]]. Around this time he chanced upon a copy of [[Henry Miller]]'s 1934 novel ''[[Tropic of Cancer (novel)|Tropic of Cancer]]''.<ref name="durrell.in.CA"/> After reading it, he wrote to Miller, expressing intense admiration for his novel. Durrell's letter sparked an enduring friendship<ref name="durrell.in.CA"/> and mutually critical relationship that spanned 45 years. Durrell's next novel, ''[[Panic Spring]]'', was strongly influenced by Miller's work,<ref name="orend">Karl Orend, "New Bibles", ''Times Literary Supplement'' 22 August 2008 p 15</ref> while his 1938 novel ''[[The Black Book (1938 novel)|The Black Book]]'' abounded with "[[four-letter word]]s... grotesques,... [and] its mood equally as apocalyptic" as ''Tropic''.<ref name="orend"/>

In Corfu, Lawrence and Nancy lived together in [[Bohemianism|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, Durrell and Nancy moved to the White House, a fisherman's cottage on the shore of Corfu's northeastern coast at [[Kalami, Corfu|Kalami]], then a tiny fishing village. The Durrell family's friend [[Theodore Stephanides]], a Greek doctor, scientist and poet, was a frequent guest, and Miller stayed at the White House in 1939.

Durrell fictionalised this period of his sojourn on Corfu in the lyrical novel ''Prospero's Cell''. His younger brother [[Gerald Durrell]], who became a naturalist, published his own version in his memoir ''[[My Family and Other Animals]]'' (1954) and in the following two books of Gerald's so-called ''Corfu Trilogy'', published in 1969 and 1978. Gerald describes Lawrence as living permanently with his mother and siblings — his wife Nancy is not mentioned at all. Lawrence, in his turn, refers only briefly to his brother Leslie, and he does not mention that his mother and two other siblings were also living on Corfu in those years. The accounts cover a few of the same topics; for example, both Gerald and Lawrence describe the roles played in their lives by the Corfiot taxi driver Spyros Halikiopoulos and Theodore Stephanides. In Corfu, Lawrence became friends with [[Marie Aspioti]], with whom he cooperated in the publication of ''Lear's Corfu''.<ref name="Lillios2004">{{Cite book | last = Lillios | first = Anna | title = Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World | publisher = Susquehanna University Press | year = 2004 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xevl3TA26KUC | isbn =978-1575910765 | access-date = 26 June 2013}}</ref>{{rp|260}}

===Pre WW2: In Paris with Miller and Nin===
In August 1937, Lawrence and Nancy travelled to the Villa Seurat in [[Paris]], France, 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."<ref>{{cite book | last=Dearborn | first=Mary V. | title=The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller | publisher=Touchstone Books | year=1992 | isbn=0-671-77982-6 | url=https://archive.org/details/happiestmanalive00mary }} p. 192 and picture insert captions.</ref> 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]]''. Jack Kahane of the [[Obelisk Press]] served as publisher.

Durrell said that he had three literary uncles: [[T. S. Eliot]], the Greek poet [[George Seferis]], and Miller. He first read Miller after finding a copy of ''[[Tropic of Cancer (novel)|Tropic of Cancer]]'' that had been left behind in a public lavatory. He said the book shook him "from stem to stern".<ref name="durrell.in.CA">Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/4ZTajhgR82M Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20140607121904/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZTajhgR82M Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web|last1=Durrell|first1=Lawrence|publisher=From the archives of the [[UCLA]] Communications Studies Department. Digitized 2013|title=Lawrence Durrell speaking at UCLA 1/12/1972|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZTajhgR82M|website=YouTube|access-date=16 August 2015|date=2014-03-31}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

Durrell's first novel of note, ''[[The Black Book (1938 novel)|The Black Book: An Agon]]'', was strongly influenced by Miller; it was published in Paris in 1938. The mildly pornographic work was not published in Great Britain until 1973. In the story, the main character Lawrence Lucifer struggles to escape the spiritual sterility of dying England and finds Greece to be a warm and fertile environment.

===World War Two===
====Breakdown of marriage====
At the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, Durrell's mother and siblings returned to England, while Nancy and he remained on Corfu. In 1940, they had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. After the [[Battle of Greece|fall of Greece]], Lawrence and Nancy escaped from [[Kalamata]], where they had been teaching,<ref>Durrell was the director of the British Council’s English Language Institute in Kalamata (Peloponnese) from September 1940 to April 1941. The little house provided for him on Navarinou Street (no. 83), on the seafront, remains. With his first wife Nancy (née Myers) and baby daughter Penelope, the family fled to Egypt as the German army advanced (see, e.g., Ian MacNiven (1998), ''Lawrence Durrell: a biography'', Faber, pp.226-7; Nikos Zervis (1999), ''Lawrence Durrell in Kalamata'', isbn: 978-960-90690-1-0 (published privately) (in Greek); Joanna Hodgkin (2023), ''Amateurs in Eden: the story of a bohemian marriage; Nancy and Lawrence Durrell'', Virago, pp.258-63.</ref> via [[Crete]] to [[Alexandria]], [[Egypt]]. The marriage was already under strain and they separated in 1942. Nancy took the baby Penelope with her to [[Jerusalem]].

During his years on Corfu, Durrell had made notes for a book about the island. He did not write it fully until he was in Egypt towards the end of the war. In the book ''[[Prospero's Cell]]'', Durrell described Corfu as "this brilliant little speck of an island in the [[Ionian Sea|Ionian]]".{{page needed|date=October 2016}} with waters "like the heartbeat of the world itself".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Durrell |first1=Lawrence |title=Prospero's cell : a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=0140046852 |page=[https://archive.org/details/prosperoscellgui00durr/page/100 100] |url=https://archive.org/details/prosperoscellgui00durr/page/100 }}</ref>

====Press attaché in Egypt and Rhodes; second marriage====
During World War Two, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British embassies, first in [[Cairo]] and then Alexandria. While in Alexandria he met Eve (Yvette) Cohen (1918–2004), a Jewish Alexandrian. She inspired his character [[Justine (Durrell novel)|Justine]] in ''[[The Alexandria Quartet]]''. In 1947, after his divorce from Nancy was completed, Durrell married Eve Cohen, with whom he had been living since 1942.<ref name=SDperGranta1991>{{cite web|url=https://granta.com/journals-and-letters/|date=1 October 1991|title=Journals and Letters [of] Sappho Durrell|work=Sappho Durrell, quoted posthumously in a lengthy review of an "edited selection from the journals and letters [of Sappho Durrell] ... drawn mainly from 1979"|publisher=[[Granta|Granta 37]]|access-date=14 October 2020}}</ref> The couple's daughter, Sappho Jane, was born in [[Oxfordshire]] in 1951,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=%2FU7K5Kiz2gO%2FzUs03L%2Ba7g&scan=1|title=Index entry|access-date=13 October 2020 |work=FreeBMD |publisher=ONS}}</ref> and named after the ancient Greek poet [[Sappho]].<ref name=SD&LDperJR/>

In May 1945, Durrell obtained a posting to [[Rhodes]], the largest of the [[Dodecanese]] islands that Italy had taken over from the disintegrating [[Ottoman Empire]] in 1912 during the [[Balkan Wars]]. With the Italian surrender to the Allies in 1943, German forces 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. A temporary British military government was established in the Dodecanese at war's end, pending sovereignty being transferred to Greece in 1947, as part of [[war reparations]] from Italy. Durrell set up house with Eve in the little gatekeeper's lodge of an old Turkish cemetery, just across the road from the building used by the British Administration. (Today this is the Casino in Rhodes' new town.) His co-habitation with Eve Cohen could be discreetly ignored by his employer, while the couple gained from staying within the perimeter security zone of the main building.  His book ''[[Reflections on a Marine Venus]]'' was inspired by this period and was a lyrical celebration of the island. It avoids more than a passing mention of the troubled war times.

[[File:LDurrellHouseRhodes.JPG|right|thumb|200px|alt=Durrell's house in Rhodes features Mediterranean architecture and has yellow-painted stucco or plaster walls. It is located on a paved asphalt street, with two cars parked parallel to it. The house is surrounded by several trees, shrubbery, roses, and flowering bushes.| Durrell's home in [[Rhodes]] from 20 May 1945 until 10 April 1947]]

===British Council work in Córdoba and Belgrade; teaching in Cyprus===
In 1947, Durrell was appointed director of the [[British Council]] Institute in Córdoba, [[Argentina]]. He served there for eighteen months, giving lectures on cultural topics.<ref>Interview with Marc Alyn, published in Paris in 1972, translated by Francine Barker in 1974; reprinted in Earl G. Ingersoll, ''Lawrence Durrell: Conversations'', Associated University Presses, 1998. {{ISBN|0-8386-3723-X}}. p. 138.</ref> He returned to London with Eve in the summer of 1948, around the time that Marshal [[Josip Broz Tito|Tito]] of Yugoslavia broke ties with [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s [[Cominform]]. Durrell was posted by the British Council to [[Belgrade]], [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]],<ref>Alyn, ''op. cit.'' Ingersoll, p. 139.</ref> and served there until 1952. This sojourn gave him material for his novel ''[[White Eagles over Serbia]]'' (1957).

In 1952, Eve had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalised in England. Durrell moved to [[Cyprus]] with their daughter Sappho Jane, buying a house and taking a position teaching English literature at the [[Pancyprian Gymnasium]] to support his writing. He next worked in [[public relations]] for the British government during the local agitation for [[Enosis|union with Greece]]. He wrote about his time in Cyprus in ''[[Bitter Lemons]]'', which won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1957. In 1954, he was selected as a Fellow of the [[Royal Society of Literature]]. Durrell left Cyprus in August 1956. Political agitation on the island and his British government position resulted in his becoming a target for assassination attempts.<ref name="Lillios2004"/>{{rp|27}}

===''Justine'' and ''The Alexandria Quartet''===
In 1957, Durrell published ''[[Justine (Durrell novel)|Justine]]'', the first novel of what was to become his most famous work, ''[[The Alexandria Quartet]]''. ''[[Justine (Durrell novel)|Justine]]'', ''[[Balthazar (novel)|Balthazar]]'' (1958), ''[[Mountolive]]'' (1958), and ''[[Clea (novel)|Clea]]'' (1960), deal with events before and during the Second World War in the Egyptian city of [[Alexandria]]. The first three books tell essentially the same story and series of events, but from the varying perspectives of different characters. Durrell described this technique in his introductory note in ''Balthazar'' as "relativistic". Only in the final novel, ''Clea'', does the story advance in time and reach a conclusion.   Critics praised the ''Quartet'' for its richness of style, the variety and vividness of its characters, its movement between the personal and the political, and its locations in and around the ancient Egyptian 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."

In 2012, when the [[Nobel Prize|Nobel]] Records were opened after 50 years, it was revealed that Durrell had been nominated for the 1961 [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], but did not make the final list.<ref name="mersault">[http://theamericanreader.com/the-prince-returns/ J. D. Mersault, "The Prince Returns: In Defense of Lawrence Durrell"], ''The American Reader'', n.d.; accessed 14 October 2016</ref>  In 1962, however, he did receive serious consideration, along with [[Robert Graves]], [[Jean Anouilh]], and [[Karen Blixen]], but ultimately lost to [[John Steinbeck]].<ref name=floodjan2013>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/03/swedish-academy-controversy-steinbeck-nobel |title=Swedish Academy reopens controversy surrounding Steinbeck's Nobel prize |work=[[The Guardian]] |author=Alison Flood |date=3 January 2013 |access-date=3 January 2013}}</ref> The academy decided that "Durrell was not to be given preference this year"—probably because "they did not think that ''The Alexandria Quartet'' was enough, so they decided to keep him under observation for the future." However, he was never nominated again.<ref name=floodjan2013/> They also noted that he "gives a dubious aftertaste … because of [his] monomaniacal preoccupation with erotic complications."<ref name=floodjan2013/>

===Two further marriages and settling in Languedoc===
In 1955 Durrell separated from Eve Cohen. He married again in 1961, to Claude-Marie Vincendon, whom he met on Cyprus. She was a Jewish woman born in Alexandria. Durrell was devastated when Claude-Marie died of cancer in 1967. He married for the fourth and last time in 1973, to Ghislaine de Boysson, a French woman. They divorced in 1979.

In the spring of 1960, Durrell was hired to rewrite the script for the 1963 film ''[[Cleopatra (1963 film)|Cleopatra]]''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bernstein|first=Matthew|title=Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|orig-year=1994|year=2000|isbn=0-8166-3548-X|page=355}}</ref> The production company had also proposed a [[Justine (1969 film)|film of ''Justine'']] which would eventually appear in 1969.

Durrell settled in [[Sommières]], a small village in [[Languedoc-Roussilon|Languedoc]], France, where he purchased a large house on the edge of the village. The house was situated in extensive grounds surrounded by a wall. Here he wrote ''[[The Revolt of Aphrodite]]'', comprising ''[[Tunc (novel)|Tunc]]'' (1968) and ''[[Nunquam (novel)|Nunquam]]'' (1970). He also completed ''[[The Avignon Quintet]]'', published from 1974 to 1985, which used many of the same motifs and styles found in his metafictional ''Alexandria Quartet''. Although the related works are frequently described as a quintet, Durrell referred to it as a "[[quincunx]]".

The opening novel, ''[[Monsieur (novel)|Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness]]'', received the 1974 [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]]. That year, Durrell was living in the United States and serving as the Andrew Mellon Visiting professor of humanities at the [[California Institute of Technology]].<ref>{{cite book | editor=Andrews, Deborah. (ed). | title=The Annual Obituary 1990 | publisher=Gale | year=1991}} p. 678.</ref>
The middle novel of the quincunx, ''[[Constance (novel)|Constance, or Solitary Practices]]'' (1981), which portrays France in the 1940s under the [[German occupation of France during World War II|German occupation]], was nominated for the [[Booker Prize]] in 1982. 
 
Other works from this period are ''Sicilian Carousel'', a non-fiction celebration of that island, ''The Greek Islands'', and ''Caesar's Vast Ghost'', which is set in and chiefly about the region of [[Provence, France]].