LOWRY, Malcolm.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Ultramarine. First edition, the publisher's retained copy with their stamp to the title page. The author's debut novel draws on his experiences as a deckhand on a tramp steamer. "In May 1927 Lowry shipped as a deckboy on a Liverpool freighter trading to Yokohama in Japan, a searing experience which provided him with the persona of 'drunken sailor-poet', a phobia about syphilis, and material for his first novel... Ultramarine, greatly influenced by Aiken's Blue Voyage and Nordahl Grieg's The Ship Sails on (Lowry visited Grieg in Oslo in 1931), grew into a highly wrought, stream-of-consciousness novel laden with literary allusions" (ODNB).The book was received with mixed reviews, and Howard records that, of the 1,500 copies printed, about only half were sold.

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