Lowry, Malcolm, << LOWR ee, MAL kuhm >> (1909-1957), was an English author best known for his novel Under the Volcano (1947). In that novel, Lowry created a complex psychological and symbolic study of a disturbed mind. The story takes place on the last day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a former British diplomat living in Mexico, who has become a hopeless alcoholic.
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was born on July 28, 1909, in New Brighton, near Birkenhead, England. Lowry wrote Ultramarine (1933), a fictional account of a sea voyage he took as a young man. He did much of his writing from 1939 to 1954 while living in Canada. He died on June 27, 1957. Lowry left considerable unpublished material when he died. Some of it was published after his death, including a book of related short stories, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961); Selected Poems (1962); and Selected Letters (1965).
