From the Elephant's Back by Lawrence Durrell

Published by
    The University of Alberta Press
    Ring House 2
    Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1
    www.uap.ualberta.ca
    Copyright © 2015 The Beneficiaries of the Literary Estate of Lawrence Durrell
    Introduction and annotations copyright © 2015 James Gifford
    LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
    Durrell, Lawrence [Essays. Selections]
    From the elephant’s back: collected essays & travel writings / Lawrence Durrell; edited and with an introduction by James Gifford; foreword by Peter Baldwin.
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Issued in print and electronic formats.
    ISBN 978–1–77212–051–6 (pbk.).—
    ISBN 978–1–77212–059–2 (epub).—
    ISBN 978–1–77212–060–8 (kindle).—
    ISBN 978–1–77212–061–5 (PDF)
    I. Gifford, James, 1974–, editor, writer of introduction II. Title.

PR6007.U76A6 2015
824’.912
C2014–908313–0
C2014–908314–9
    Index available in print and PDF editions.
    First edition, first printing, 2015.
    First electronic edition, 2015.
    Digital conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.
    Copyediting and proofreading by Joanne Muzak.
    Indexing by Lindsay Parker.
    Cover design by Alan Brownoff.
    Cover image: Chris Bennett, Hannibal (detail). Used by permission. www.chrisbenn.com
    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent. Contact the University of Alberta Press for further details.
    The University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from The Canada Council for the Arts. The University of Alberta Press also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund (AMF) for its publishing activities.
    This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Foreword
    A taste or more correctly a passion which once contracted can never be cured.
    â€”JAMES POPE-HENNESSY, Aspects of Provence
    As for human characters, whether real or invented, there are no such animals. Each psyche is really an ant-hill of opposing predispositions. Personality as something with fixed attributes is an illusion—but a necessary illusion if we are to love!
    â€”LAWRENCE DURRELL, Balthazar
    THE GENESIS OF THIS COLLECTION took place one weekend over ten years ago when I met with my fellow Durrell enthusiast and collector, Peter Dixon, to talk Durrell and to inspect my extensive but disordered collection of work by and about Lawrence Durrell.
    I had been a serious collector (someone who will order a book first then look at the price!) since the late 1970s. I had wandered in and out of second-hand bookshops, raided the catalogues of dealers of “Modern Firsts,” plagued Bernard Stone (himself a long time collector, seller, and publisher of Durrell’s work from various London bookshop premises), and placed daredevil bids at auctions until I had what might be termed a respectable collection.
    If space, the arrival of babies, and indolence stopped me cataloguing the collection, it is still great fun to pull down a banker’s box marked simply “Durrell” and see what lies beneath the anonymous cardboard lid. Thus it was that, one winter’s day, Peter and I dug into this trove. We pulled out all the copies we could find where Durrell had contributed an occasional piece of writing. I knew there would be a lot, and soon Peter and I were in hot debate as to what should be left out of the collection that I then had in