Inside Mr. Enderby

Inside Mr Enderby is a the first volume of the Enderby series, a quartet of comic novels by the British author Anthony Burgess. The book was first published in 1963 in London by William Heinemann under the pseudonym Joseph Kell. The series began in 1963 with the publication of this book, and concluded in 1984 with Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby (after a ten year break following the publication of the third novel in the series, The Cloc... more

Inside Mr Enderby is a the first volume of the Enderby series, a quartet of comic novels by the British author Anthony Burgess. The book was first published in 1963 in London by William Heinemann under the pseudonym Joseph Kell. The series began in 1963 with the publication of this book, and concluded in 1984 with Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby (after a ten year break following the publication of the third novel in the series, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End). The story opens on a note of pure fantasy, showing schoolchildren from the future taking a field trip through time to see the dyspeptic poet Francis Xavier Enderby while he is asleep. Enderby, a lapsed Catholic in his mid-40's, lives alone in Brighton as a 'professional' poet - his income being interest from investments left to him by his stepmother. Enderby composes his poetry whilst seated on the toilet. His bathtub, which serves as a filing cabinet, is almost full of the mingled paper and food scraps that... less