John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) was born in Derbyshire, brought up in the West Country (the Somerset/Dorset border area was to have a lasting influence on him), went to Cambridge University and then became a teacher and lecturer mainly in the USA where he lived for about thirty years. On returning to the UK, after a short spell in Dorset, he settled in Wales in 1935 where he lived for the rest of his long life.
Those are the bare bones of his life. In some senses they seem unimportant when set alongside his extraordinary writing career. Not only was output prodigious, it was like nothing else in English Literature. Indeed, George Steiner has made the bold claim that his works are 'the only novels produced by an English writer that can fairly be compared to the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky'. And even that doesn't touch on their multifarious strangeness.
John Cowper Powys wrote compulsively: letters, diaries, short stories, fantasies, poetry, literary criticism, philosophy and, above all, novels poured out of him. He also wrote a remarkable autobiography. In addition to his Autobiography his masterpieces are considered to be Wolf Solent, Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands and Porius. But his lesser, or less well-known, works shouldn't be overlooked, they spring from the same weird, mystical, brilliant and obsessive imagination.
John Cowper Powys is a challenging author with an impressive list of admirers. In addition to George Steiner, these have included Robertson Davies, Margaret Drabble, Theodore Dreiser, Henry Miller, J. B. Priestley and Angus Wilson.
More about John Cowper Powys
On 'The Meaning of Culture' by John Cowper Powys Click Here
On JCP and the Magical Quest Click Here
The Late Novels of John Cowper Powys Click Here
The Early Novels of John Cowper Powys Click Here
Books by John Cowper Powys
The Art of Happiness
John Cowper Powys
The Art of Happiness (first published in 1935) belongs to John Cowper Powys's sequence of philosophical writings, and finds him exploring the problem of how man lives with his ...
In Defence of Sensuality
John Cowper Powys
In Defence of Sensuality
was first published in 1930. The author’s own foreword to the book is worth quoting in full:
‘The author feels that perhaps some explanation is ...
The Meaning of Culture
John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys could never be straightforward or orthodox but here he sets off with a useful purpose:
‘The aim of this book,’ he declares, ‘is to narrow down a ...
Autobiography
John Cowper Powys
‘I have tried to write my life as if I were confessing to a priest, a philosopher, and a wise old woman. I have tried to write as if I ...
The Inmates
John Cowper Powys
'What I've tried to do in this tale is to invent a group of really mad people who have the fantastic and grotesquely humorous extravagance that, afer all, is ...
Atlantis
John Cowper Powys
Published in 1954, John Cowper Powys called this novel, a 'long romance about Odysseus in his extreme old age, hoisting sail once more from Ithaca'.
As usual there is a ...
The Brazen Head
John Cowper Powys
In this panoramic novel of Friar Roger Bacon, John Cowper Powys displays his genius at its most fecund. First published in 1956, this novel, set in thirteenth-century Wessex, is an ...
Ducdame
John Cowper Powys
Ducdame was John Cowper Powys' fourth novel published in 1925. It is set in Dorset. The protagonist, Rook Ashover (a wonderfully Powysian name) is an introverted young squire with a ...
Morwyn
John Cowper Powys
First published in 1937, John Cowper Powys originally wanted to call this novel ‘Hell’. One can see why. Powys was a fervent opponent of vivisection, ‘man’s most vicious cruelty ...
Wood and Stone
John Cowper Powys
Wood and Stone was John Cowper Powys' first novel published in 1915. It is no prentice-work however - the author was already in his forties.
The novel is set in the ...
Rodmoor
John Cowper Powys
Rodmoor is, unusually for a John Cowper Powys novel, set in East Anglia, Rodmoor itself being a coastal village. The protagonist, Adrian Sorio, is a typically Powys-like hero, highly-strung with ...
After My Fashion
John Cowper Powys
After My Fashion has an unusual publishing history. Although it was John Cowper Powys third novel written in 1920, it wasn't published until 1980. It seems that when his ...
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