LAWRENCE DURRELL - A critical study of English, Continental, and other modern writers

Sep 29, 2026

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Essay number 6 in the Columbia Essays on Modern Writers series presents Lawrence Durrell through a critical overview of his literary variety and consistency. John Unterecker describes Durrell’s wide range of forms—from thriller, poetry, drama, and travel writings to fiction and literary criticism—while emphasizing recurring themes, directness, and a coherent developing point of view. The introduction also outlines publication context and the series’ purpose.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages52

Reading Time2 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Series overview and authorship

Durrell’s literary variety

Recurring themes and critical approach

Biographical context and influences

CMW NUMBER 6 PRICE $.65 # LAWRENCE DURRELL by John Unterecker Unterecker PR 6007 Lawrence Durrell. U76 Z9 | DATE DUE | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SOUTH CAMPUS LIBRARY Community College of Allegheny CountyWest Mifflin,Pennsylvania 15122 Jnterecker,John Eugene, SOUTH PR6007.U76 Z9 Lawrence Durrell 3037300000243850 Lawrence Durrell by JOHN UNTERECKER Columbia University Press NEW YORK LONDON 1964 羽oo0 9 COLUMBIA ESSAYS ON MODERN WRITERS is a series ofcritical studies of English,Continental,and other writers whoseworks are of contemporary artistic and intellectual significance. Editor:William York Tindall Advisory EditorsW.T.H.Jackson Joseph A.Mazzeo Jacques Barzun Laurence Durrell is Number 6 of the series. JOHN UNTERECKER,Associate Professor of English atColumbia University,is the author of A Reader's Guide toWilliam Butler Yeats and the editor of Yeats,A CriticalCollection of Essays. Copyright 1964 Columbia University PressLibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number:64-22642Manufactured in the United States of America The discussion in this essay of An Irish Faustus is expanded from anarticle that first appeared in Saturday Review of March 21,1964 I want to thank Lawrence Durrell and E.P.Dutton and Co.,Inc.,publishers of most of Durrell's books in America,for their cooperationand assistance. Lawrence Durrell Lawrence Durrell is a man of infinite variety.But he's a manof marble constancy as well.The forms in which he hasworked embrace the whole range of literary possibility.Yetthe themes he has dealt with-even the images which carrythose themes-display a simple kind of shining directness,markout a clear path for his developing but remarkably consistentpoint of view.He is consequently one of our most proteanwriters and at the same time one of our most predictable ones. It is variety,however,that immediately strikes anyone whodoes no more than glance through a stack of Durrell's col-lected works.(Getting that stack together is,as Durrell'sbibliographers have pointed out,no easy task;for private pub-lication,out-of-the-way publication-Shanghai and Cairo areamong the exotic addresses of Durrell's publishers-and thebook-destroying accidents of war have made Durrell's earlyworks collector's rarities.)Even if one limits one's glance toworks currently in print,something of Durrell's enormousrange is bound to be suggested.He is author,for instance,ofthe espionage thriller White Eagles over Serbia(described byDurrell's American publisher as a book“for young persons”);of intricate poems(among them the sonnet of sonnets,“ASoliloquy of Hamlet”)and bawdy ballads(Dylan Thomas'sfavorite being“A Ballad of the Good Lord Nelson”);of atrilogy of “travel books"”which should perhaps more accuratelybe called island portraits(Prospero's Cell,Reflections on a Marine Venus,and Bitter Lemons);of three poetic dramas,startlingly different in tone-though not in theme;of the“solipsistic,”raw fictional account of prewar London,TheBlack Book;of comic interludes about life in the diplomaticcorps(Esprit de Corps and Stif Upper Lip);of The DarkLabyrinth,a novel which Durrell accurately described toHenry Miller as“an extended morality,but written artlesslyin the style of the detective story”;of literary criticism(AKey to Modern British Poetry);and-by far his most popularwork-of the extraordinarily complex,expanding study of theemotional education of a hero and his friends,The Alex-andria Quartet.He has also in his time turned out publicrelations copy,newspaper columns,and-presumably unavail-able to the public-a whole series of confidential reports,thebulky stuffing of diplomats'bags and Home Office files.Hehas published some of his letters to Henry Miller and a smallergroup of letters(to Alfred Perlès)about Henry Miller.H

FAQs

What is the series and what does it focus on?

The text states that COLUMBIA ESSAYS ON MODERN WRITERS is a series of critical studies of English, Continental, and other writers of contemporary artistic and intellectual significance.

Who wrote this essay about Lawrence Durrell?

The author is John Unterecker, identified as an Associate Professor of English at Columbia University.

How does the essay characterize Lawrence Durrell’s writing?

It describes him as a man of infinite variety yet marked by “marble constancy,” combining protean range of forms with remarkably consistent themes and point of view.

Sep 29, 2026

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