An Open Access edition of this book is available on the
Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.



‘Who
ever thought they would one day be able to read Malcolm Lowry’s fabled novel of
the 1930s and 40s, In Ballast to the
White Sea? Lord knows, I didn’t’ – Michael Hofmann, TLS



This book breaks new ground in studies of the British
novelist Malcolm Lowry (1909–57), as the first collection of new essays
produced in response to the publication in 2014 of a scholarly edition of
Lowry’s ‘lost’ novel, In Ballast to the
White Sea. In their introduction, editors Helen Tookey and Bryan Biggs
show how the publication of In Ballast
sheds new light on Lowry as both a highly political writer and one deeply
influenced by his native Merseyside, as his protagonist Sigbjørn
Hansen-Tarnmoor walks the streets of Liverpool, wrestling with his own
conscience and with pressing questions of class, identity and social
reform. In the chapters that follow, renowned Lowry
scholars and newer voices explore key aspects of the novel and its relation to
the wider contexts of Lowry’s work. These include his complex relation to socialism
and communism, the symbolic value of Norway, and the
significance of tropes of loss, hauntings and doublings. The book draws on the
unexpected opportunity offered by the rediscovery of In Ballast to look afresh at Lowry’s oeuvre, to ‘remake the voyage’.