Lowry reputedly wrote his own epitaph: 'Here lies Malcolm Lowry, late of the Bowery, whose prose was flowery, and often glowery. Lowry is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Ripe. Inconsistencies in the accounts given by his wife at various times about what happened at the night of his death have also given rise to suspicions of murder. Born near Liverpool, England, Lowry grew up in a prominent, wealthy family and chafed under the expectations placed upon him by parents and boarding school. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in November 1939. Malcolm Lowry was a British novelist and poet whose masterpiece Under the Volcano is widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. It has been suggested that his death was a suicide. Under the Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (19091957) published in 1947. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure, and the causes of death given as inhalation of stomach contents, barbiturate poisoning, and excessive consumption of alcohol. Lowry died in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with wife Margerie after having returned to England in the summer of 1955, ill and impoverished. He wrote passionately on the themes of exile and despair, and his own wanderlust and erratic lifestyle made him an icon to later generations of writers.

Malcolm Lowry was a British novelist and poet whose masterpiece Under the Volcano is widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry