Literature

Literature

Almost entirely dependent on working from a model, Lowry makes reference to many books, poems, and writers in Under the Volcano. While some references were disguised, toned down or removed from the text in the revision process between the 1940 Volcano and the novel as it was published in 1947, many remain.


Conrad Aiken	Nordahl Grieg	Jack London	Shelley	Dante


Guillaume Apollinaire	Barbarous Mexico	The Lost Weekend	Moby Dick	Elizabethan plays


The Story of Ferdinand	La machine Infernale	Antigone	Grace Abounding	Mahabharata


		Faust and Faustus

"Everything is to be found in Peter Rabbit," the Consul liked to say – UTV, 175.

"Everything" includes the garden, the gardener, eviction from Paradise, the fate of Peter's father, the jacket, and even the Cabbalistic writer, MacGregor Mathers, from whom Lowry took his list of demons (UTV, 185-86).

Above: A manuscript page from UTV, with Lowry's handwritten notes at left: "Please Margie look to see if there's no | See there is no plagiarism here from Maria Concepçion by Katherine Anne Porter at beginning". Image courtesy UBC Special Collections.