John Cowper Powys ( ; 8 October 187217 June 1963) was an English novelist, philosopher, lecturer, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879.Peak District online Powys appeared with a volume of verse in 1896 and a first novel in 1915, but gained success only with his novel Wolf Solent in 1929. He has been seen as a successor to Thomas Hardy, and Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance (1932), Weymouth Sands (1934), and Maiden Castle (1936) have been called his Wessex novels. As with Hardy, landscape is important to his works. So is elemental philosophy in his characters' lives.Denis Lane, "The Elemental Image in Wolf Solent", in In the Spirit of Powys: New Essays, ed. Denis Lane. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990, p. 57; and "Elementalism in John Cowper Powys's Porius". Papers on Language and Literature, 17, no. 4 (1981), pp. 381–404. In 1934 he published an autobiography. His itinerant lectures were a success in England and in 1905–1930 in the United States, where he wrote many of his novels and had several first published. He moved to Dorset, England, in 1934 with a US partner, Phyllis Playter. In 1935 they moved to Corwen, Merionethshire, Wales, where he set two novels, and in 1955 to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where he died in 1963.
Biography Early life
Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys (1843–1923), and Mary Cowper Johnson, granddaughter of Dr John Johnson, the cousin and close friend of the poet William Cowper.John Cowper Powys, Autobiography (1934). London: Macdonald, 1967. The most up-to-date biographical information is found in Morine Krissdottir's, Descents of Memory: The Life of John Cowper Powys. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2007. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also talented. The family lived in Shirley between 1871 and 1879, briefly in Dorchester, Dorset and then they moved to Montacute, Somerset, where Charles Powys was vicar for thirty-two years.Western Chronicle, 26 April 1918 p.7.
John Cowper Powys's two younger brothers Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939) and Theodore Francis Powys were well-known writers, while his sister Philippa Powys published a novel and some poetry, and Gertrude Mary Powys was an artist. Another sister Marian Powys was an authority on lace and lace-making and published a book on this subject.Lace and Lace-Making. Boston: Mass., Ch. Branford, 1953. His brother A. R. Powys was Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and published a number of books on architectural subjects.London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1929; From The Ground Up Collected Papers Of A. R. Powys by A.R. Powy. London: Dent, 1937. Powys was educated at Sherborne School and graduated from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, June 1894.
On 6 April 1896 he married Margaret Lyon. They had a son, Littleton Alfred, in 1902.Herbert Williams, John Cowper Powys. Bridgend, Wales: Seren,1997, pp. 36, 44. Powys's first employment was teaching in girls' schools in Brighton, and then Eastbourne.Autobiography (1967), pp. 210, 244 His first published works were two highly derivative collections of poetry published in the 1890s. He worked from 1898 as an Extension lecturer throughout England, for both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.Kenneth Hopkins, John Cowper Powys: A Selection from his Poems. Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 1964, p. 13. Autobiography (1967), p. 223.
Lecturer in America Then from 1905 to the early 1930s, he lectured in the United States for the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, gaining a reputation as a charismatic speaker.Herbert Williams, John Cowper Powys, pp. 52–3. He spent his summers in England. During this time he travelled the length and breadth of the US, as well as into Canada.Herbert Williams, p. 55, Robin Paterson, "Powys in Canada: John Cowper Powys's Canadian Lectures". Powys Notes (1994/95, p. 33. Powys's marriage was unsatisfactory, and Powys eventually lived a large part of each year in the USA, and had relationships with various women.Herbert Williams, pp. 77, 70. An important woman in his life was the American poet Frances Gregg, whom he first met in Philadelphia in 1912. He was also a friend of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan.Herbert Williams, John Cowper Powys, pp. 83–4. Another friend and an important supporter in America was the novelist Theodore Dreiser.Autobiography (1967), pp. 528, 550–5. In 1921 he met Phyllis Playter, the twenty-six-year-old daughter of industrialist and business man Franklin Playter.Morine Krissdottir's, Descents of Memory, pp. 170 Eventually they established a permanent relationship, though he was unable to divorce his wife Margaret, who was a Catholic. However, he diligently supported Margaret and the education of their son.Morine Krissdottir, Descents of Memory, pp. 72, 86–90, 170, 298.
In the US he engaged in a public debate with the philosopher Bertrand Russell on marriage, and he also debated with the philosopher and historian Will Durant.Autobiography (1967), p. 535. Powys was also a witness in the obscenity trial of James Joyce's novel Ulysses,Morine Krissdottir's, Descents of Memory, pp. 235–6; p. 212; p. 135. and was mentioned with approval in the autobiography of US feminist and anarchist, Emma Goldman. Powys would later share Goldman's support for the Spanish Revolution.Vision on fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution edited by David Porter, AK Press, 2006, p. 48.
His first novel Wood and Stone, which Powys dedicated to Thomas Hardy, was published in 1915. This was followed by two collections of literary essays Visions and Revisions (1915) and Suspended Judgment (1916). In Confessions of Two Brothers (1916), a work that also contains a section by his brother Llewelyn, Powys writes about his personal philosophy, something he elaborated on in The Complex Vision (1920), his first full length work of popular philosophy. He also published three collections of poetry between 1916 and 1922.
Politically, Powys described himself as an anarchist and was both anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist: "Powys already regarded fascism and Stalinism as appalling, but different, totalitarian regimes".H. Gustav Klaus and Stephen Thomas Knight, To Hell with Culture: Anarchism and Twentieth-Century British Literature. University of Wales Press, 2005. . p. 127.See the two chapters on Powys in David Goodway's Anarchist Seeds beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. PM Press, 2011
It was not until 1929, with the novel Wolf Solent, that Powys achieved any critical or financial success.C. A. Coates. John Cowper Powys in Search of a Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Nonle, 1982, p. 90. In 1930 Powys and Phyllis moved from Greenwich Village in New York City to Hillsdale in rural upstate New York.Herbert Williams, p. 97. One of Powys's most admired novels, A Glastonbury Romance, published in 1932, sold well, though he made little if any money from it because of a libel lawsuit.Coates, p. 90. Another important work, Autobiography, was published in 1934.
Settling in Wales Then in June 1934 Powys and Phyllis left America and moved to England, living first in Dorchester, the setting for the final Wessex novel, Maiden Castle, before eventually moving in July 1935 to Corwen, Denbighshire North Wales, with the help of the novelist James Hanley, who lived nearby.Herbert Williams, p. 109. Corwen was historically part of Edeirnion or Edeyrnion and an ancient commote of medieval Wales, once a part of the Kingdom of Powys. There Powys immersed himself in Welsh literature, mythology and culture, including learning to read Welsh.Krissdottir pp. 330–31. The move inspired two major historical novels with Welsh settings, Owen Glendower (1941) and Porius (1951).
Margaret Powys died in 1947, and his son Littleton Alfred in 1954.Morine Krissdottir's, Descents of Memory, pp. 370, 407.
In May 1955 they moved, for the last time, to Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales. John Cowper Powys died in 1963 and Phyllis Playter in 1982.See Powys's Autobiography (1967) and Descents of Memory by Morine Krissdottir.
Works Poetry Powys's first published works were poetry: Odes and Other Poems (1896), Poems (1899), collections which have "echoes […] of Tennyson, Arnold, Swinburne, among contemporaries, and of Milton and Wordsworth and Keats". These were published with the assistance of his cousin Ralph Shirley, who was a director of William Rider and Son the publisher of them.name=Kenneth Hopkins 1964, p. 13 In the summer of 1905 Powys composed "The Death of God" an epic poem "modelled on the blank verse of Milton, Keats, and Tennyson" that was published as Lucifer in 1956.Autobiography (1967), p. 338. Lucifer was published by Macdonald. There were three further volumes of poetry: Wolf's Bane (1916), Mandragora (1917) and Samphire (1922). The first two collections were published by Powys's manager G. Arnold Shaw. An unfinished, short narrative poem "The Ridge" was published in January 1963, shortly before Powys's death that June.Review of English Literature, vol. IV, no.1, pp. 53–58. In 1964 Kenneth Hopkins published John Cowper Powys: A Selection from his Poems and in 1979 the Welsh poet and critic Roland Mathias thought this side of Powys worthy of critical study and published The Hollowed-Out Elder Stalk: John Cowper Powys as Poet.London: Enitharmon Press. Belinda Humfrey, suggests that "[p]erhaps Powys's best poems are those given to Jason Otter in Wolf Solent and Taliessin in Porius.""Introduction" to Essays on John Cowper Powys, ed. Belinda Humfrey. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1972, p. 24.
The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973) edited by English poet Philip Larkin contains "In A Hotel Writing-Room" by Powys.
Novels Wessex novels While he was a famous lecturer and published a variety of both fiction and non-fiction regularly from 1915, it was not until he was in his early fifties, with the publication of Wolf Solent in 1929, that he achieved critical and financial success as a novelist.C. A. Coates, John Cowper Powys in Search of a Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982, p. 90. This novel was reprinted several times in both the United States and Britain and translated into German in 1930 and French in 1931.Derek Langridge, John Cowper Powys: A Record of Achievement. London: The Library Association, 1966, pp. 115, 121 In the Preface he wrote for the 1961 Macdonald edition of the novel Powys states: "Wolf Solent is a book of Nostalgia, written in a foreign country with the pen of a traveller and the ink-blood of his home".1964 Penguin edition, p. 11. Wolf Solent is set in Ramsgard, based on Sherborne, Dorset, where Powys attended school from May 1883, as well as Blacksod, modelled on Yeovil, Somerset, and Dorchester and Weymouth, both in Dorset, all places full of memories for him.Krissdottir, p. 37 re school. In the same year The Meaning of Culture was published and it, too, was frequently reprinted. In Defence of Sensuality, published at the end of the following year, was yet another best seller. First published in 1933, A Philosophy of Solitude was another best seller for Powys in the USA.Derek Langridge, John Cowper Powys: A Record of Achievement