27 Facts About Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry was said to have felt neglected by his mother, and was closest to his brother.

Malcolm Lowry began drinking alcohol at the age of 14.

Malcolm Lowry's father expected him to go to Cambridge and enter the family business, but Malcolm wanted to experience the world and convinced his father to let him work as a deckhand on a tramp steamer to the Far East.

Malcolm Lowry spent little time at the university, but excelled in writing, graduating in 1932 with a third-class honours degree in English upon submitting several extracts of his first draft of Ultramarine for examination.

Malcolm Lowry felt responsible for his death and was haunted by it for the rest of his life.

Malcolm Lowry was already well travelled; besides his sailing experience, between terms he made visits to America, to befriend his literary idol, Conrad Aiken, and to Germany.

Malcolm Lowry continued to drink heavily though he devoted more energy to his writing.

Malcolm Lowry then ran off with another man in late 1937.

Alone in Oaxaca, Malcolm Lowry entered into another period of dark alcoholic excess, culminating in his deportation from Mexico in the summer of 1938.

Malcolm Lowry's family put him up at the Hotel Normandie in Los Angeles where he continued working on his novel and met his second wife, the actress and writer Margerie Bonner.

Malcolm Lowry's father sent his rent checks directly to the Normandie's hotel manager.

When World War II broke out, Malcolm Lowry tried to enlist but was rejected.

In 1944, the beach shack was destroyed by a fire, and Malcolm Lowry was injured in his efforts to save manuscripts.

The couple traveled to Europe, America and the Caribbean, and while Malcolm Lowry continued to drink heavily, this seems to have been a relatively peaceful and productive period.

Malcolm Lowry lived in Canada for much of his active writing career and is thus considered a significant figure in Canadian literature.

Malcolm Lowry won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction in 1961 for his posthumous collection Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place.

Malcolm Lowry died in June 1957, in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with wife Margerie after having returned to England in 1955, ill and impoverished.

Malcolm Lowry is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Ripe.

Malcolm Lowry published little during his lifetime, in comparison with the extensive collection of unfinished manuscripts he left.

Ultramarine, written while Malcolm Lowry was still an undergraduate, follows a young man's first sea voyage and his determination to gain the crew's acceptance.

Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry is an Oscar-nominated National Film Board of Canada documentary directed by Donald Brittain and John Kramer.

Selections from Malcolm Lowry's novel are read by Richard Burton amid images shot in Mexico, the United States, Canada and England.

Malcolm Lowry's working copy of the manuscript was then lost in a fire.

Malcolm Lowry envisioned The Voyage That Never Ends as his magnum opus: an epic cycle encompassing his existing novels and stories as well as projected works, with Under the Volcano as its centrepiece.

Malcolm Lowry spent much of his writing life crafting his body of work into a greater, thematically cohesive whole, which he called The Voyage That Never Ends.

Malcolm Lowry labelled Under the Volcano as "The Centre" while marking Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, Eridanus, and La Mordida as "Trilogy".

Malcolm Lowry planned to use this basic narrative pattern as the springboard for innumerable questions about such concerns as art, identity, the nature of existence, political issues, and alcoholism.