John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) has been called the forgotten man of English literature, seemingly a remarkable assessment for such a prolific writer. He lived for many years in the U.S., and his inspirational delivery made him a fixture on the lecture circuit. Novels such as Weymouth Sands, Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance, Porius, and Maiden Castle, along with the impressive Autobiography, stand as landmarks of twentieth-century writing, yet debate over his genius, or lack of it, has raged since before his death.He brought to his fiction a fully formed personal philosophy and psychology. A Yeatsian Romantic, he employed mythology and place to explore the characters in his novels. His Wessex novels bear comparison with Hardy’s. The reconciliation of contraries, the power of the imagination, and the evocation of elemental forces mark his fiction. Herbert Williams, director of a television documentary about Powys, assesses this complex and intriguing figure in this informative survey.