Lawrence George Durrell was born February 27, 1912, in Jullundur, India, the child of English railway engineer Lawrence Samuel Durrell and his wife Louisa Florence Dixie, both of whom had been born on the subcontinent themselves. Although the young Durrell was banished to school in England in 1923, the milieu in which he grew up—a rich mixture of Indian and British colonial elements—would not only color his attitudes and philosophical preoccupations but also influence his literary tastes. In Durrell's words, Rudyard Kipling's Kim was his family's “bedside book.”

Expecting that England would resemble something out of Robert Smith Surtees, another childhood favorite, Durrell was profoundly disappointed. “That mean, shabby

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First published 08 November 2000

Citation: Koger, Grove. "Lawrence Durrell". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 November 2000.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1362, accessed 9 February 2010.]