The couple moved to the Mexican city of Cuernavaca in late 1936, in a final attempt to salvage their marriage. This failed, however, and in late 1937, Lowry was left alone in Oaxaca and entered another period of dark alcoholic excess, culminating in his being deported from the country. In 1939, he moved to Canada, and the following year he married his second wife, Margerie Bonner, an actress and writer. The couple lived and wrote in a squatter's shack on the beach near Dollarton in British Columbia. Though the couple travelled, to Europe, America and the Caribbean, and Lowry continued to drink heavily, this seems to have been a relatively peaceful and productive period. It would last until 1954, when a final nomadic period ensued, embracing New York and London, amongst other places.

Lowry died in the village of Ripe, East Sussex, where he was living with his wife. Certainly alcohol, and possibly an overdose of sleeping pills, contributed to what the coroner recorded as 'death by misadventure'.


[edit] Writings
Lowry published little during his lifetime, in comparison with the extensive collection of unfinished manuscripts he left. Of his two novels, Under the Volcano (1947) is now widely accepted not only as his masterpiece, but also as one of the great works of the twentieth century. It exemplifies Lowry's method as a writer, which involved drawing heavily upon autobiographical material and imbuing it with complex and allusive layers of symbolism. Under the Volcano depicts a series of complex and unwillingly destructive relationships and is set against a rich evocation of Mexico.

Ultramarine (1933), written whilst Lowry was still an undergraduate, follows a young man's first sea voyage and his determination to gain the crew's acceptance.

A collection of short stories, Hear Us, O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961) was published after Lowry's death. The scholar and poet Earle Birney edited Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry (1962). He also collaborated with Lowry's widow in editing the novella Lunar Caustic (1968) for re-publication. It is a conflation of several earlier pieces concerned with Bellevue Hospital, which Lowry was in the process of rewriting as a complete novel. With Douglas Day, Lowry's first biographer, Lowry's widow has also completed and edited the novels Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid (1968) and October Ferry to Gabriola (1970) from Lowry's manuscripts.

The Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by his widow and Harvey Breit, was released in 1965, followed in 1995-6 by the two volume Sursam Corda! The Collected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, edited by Sherrill E. Grace. Scholarly editions of Lowry's final work in progress, La Mordida and his screen adaptation of Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night have also been issued.

In 1976 Donald Brittain and John Kramer made an Academy Award nominated documentary about him called Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry. [1]


[edit] Bibliography
Ultramarine (1933)
Under the Volcano (1947), made into a film by John Huston in 1984

[edit] Posthumous releases
Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961)
Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry (1962)
Lunar Caustic (1968)
Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid (1968)
October Ferry to Gabriola (1970)
The Voyage That Never Ends (forthcoming in July 2007), selected stories, poems, and letters; edited by Michael Hofmann

[edit] Biography
Lowry, a Biography, Douglas Day (1973)
Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry, National Film Board of Canada, (1976)
Malcolm Lowry Remembered, G. Bowker, ed (1985)
Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry, G. Bowker (1993)
Inside the Volcano: My Life with Malcolm Lowry, Jan Gabrial (2000)

[edit] References
Asals, Frederick, The making of Malcolm Lowry's Under the volcano (University of Georgia: Athens, 1997)
Bareham, Tony, Modern Novelists: Malcolm Lowry (St Martins: New York, 1989)
Bowker, Gordon, ed, Malcolm Lowry Remembered (Ariel: London, 1985)
Bradbrook, M.C., Malcolm Lowry: His Art and Early Life (CUP: Cambridge, 1974)
Cross, Richard K., Malcolm Lowry: a preface to his fiction (Athlone Press: London, 1980)
Miller, David, Malcolm Lowry and the voyage that never ends (Enitharmon Press: London, 1976)
Smith, Anne, The art of Malcolm Lowry (Vision: London, 1978)
Stevenson, Randall, The British Novel Since the Thirties (Batsford: London, 1986)
Vice, Sue, Malcolm Lowry eighty years on (St. Martins Press: New York, 1989)
Woolmer, J. Howard, Malcolm Lowry: a bibliography (Woolmer/Brotherson: Pennsylvania, 1983)