Anarchist Transformations of English Surrealism: The Villa Seurat Network

This article traces the Villa Seurat’s literary network and its neglected anarchist background in Henry Miller’s influence and Lawrence Durrell’s unrecognized anarchist affiliations. Miller and Durrell influenced an anarchist revision of the socialist and communist orthodoxy of Surrealism. Their anarchist views, which retained surrealist aesthetics, played a major role in the international development of English language Surrealism prior to and during World War II. It had an impact on poets as diverse as David Gascoyne, Henry Treece, Robert Duncan and Kenneth Rexroth.