Wood and Stone

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 area of south Somerset that John Cowper Powys grew up in. The village of Nevilton is based on Montacute where his father was vicar for many years. When he wrote it Powys was living in the USA and it is perhaps this absence that accounts for the heightened vividness of the descriptive writing.

Powys deploys a large and wonderfully delineated cast of characters. They are loosely divided between ‘the well-constituted’ and ‘the ill-constituted’. Characteristically Powys favours the latter.