The Overloaded Ark
The Overloaded Ark, first published in 1953, is the debut book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It is the chronicle of a six-month collecting trip, from December 1947 to August 1948, to the West African colony of British Cameroon – now Cameroon and Nigeria – that Durrell made with aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland.
Their reasons for going on the trip, he wrote in the book, were twofold: "to collect and bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles that inhabit the region", and secondly, for both men to realise a long cherished dream to see Africa.
Its combination of comic exaggeration and environmental accuracy, portrayed in Durrell's light, clever prose, made it a great success. It launched Durrell's career as a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, which in turn financed his work as a zookeeper and conservationist.[1]
The Bafut Beagles and A Zoo in My Luggage are sequels of sorts, telling of his later returns to the region.
History
Durrell had married Jacqueline Sonia Wolfenden (Jacquie Durrell), 21, a music student, on 26 February 1951. She knew that he could keep a company spellbound with his talk, and wondered why he could not present stories of his animal collecting to a wider audience. Durrell, having criticized a BBC radio talk about life in West Africa, sent in a fifteen-minute radio script about his trials attempting to catch a hairy frog in the Cameroons. It was his first piece of professional writing.
The BBC accepted the script, which he read, live, on the BBC Home Service the morning of Sunday 9 December 1951. The Overloaded Ark appeared in 1953.[2][full citation needed]
References
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- The Overloaded Ark
- Three Singles to Adventure
- The Bafut Beagles
- The New Noah
- The Drunken Forest
- My Family and Other Animals
- A Zoo in My Luggage
- The Whispering Land
- Menagerie Manor
- The Donkey Rustlers
- Birds, Beasts, and Relatives
- The Talking Parcel
- The Garden of the Gods
- The Mockery Bird
- The Fantastic Flying Journey
- The Fantastic Dinosaur Adventure
- Catch Me a Colobus
- The Stationary Ark
- Ark on the Move
- My Family and Other Animals (TV series, 1987)
- My Family and Other Animals (TV film, 2005)
- The Durrells (TV series, 2016-2019)
- Lawrence Samuel Durrell (father)
- Louisa Durrell (mother)
- Lawrence Durrell (brother)
- Margaret Durrell (sister)
- Jacquie Durrell (1st wife)
- Lee McGeorge Durrell (2nd wife)
- Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
- EcoHealth Alliance
- Durrell Wildlife Park
- Les Augrès Manor
- Mauritian Wildlife Foundation
- Madagascar Fauna and Flora Group
- Wildlife Preservation Canada
- World Conference on Breeding Endangered Species in Captivity as an Aid to their Survival