SOURCE: "Under Seymour Mountain: A Note on Lowry's Stories," in Malcolm Lowry: The Man and His Work, edited by George Woodcock, University of British Columbia Press, 1971, pp. 38-41.

In the following essay, Woodcock discusses the influence of life in Canada on "The Bravest Boat, " "Gin and Goldenrod, " and "The Forest Path to the Spring."

Malcolm Lowry was born in England in 1909. He died there in 1957. And during the restless life that stretched between those poles of destiny he wandered over a great portion of the earth—the Far East, the United States, much of Europe, and, of course, Mexico, the setting of his now belatedly celebrated novel, Under the Volcano. But almost a third of his life—and the most productive third so far as his writing was concerned—he spent in Canada. He came to Vancouver just before the war, in 1939, and the next year settled in...