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Two New Powys Society
Publications |
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W.J. Keith ‘A
Glastonbury Romance’ Revisited
paperback. 189 pp, ISBN
978 1 874559 38 2
John Cowper Powys’s A
Glastonbury Romance is a celebration of mystery, a
contemporary novel that is rooted in history, myth, and
legend, “an inextricable blend of mystical and material.”
In his new book, W.J. Keith, Emeritus Professor of English
at Toronto University, sheds light on the ancient traditions
on which Powys drew to create his masterpiece: the stories
of King Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and the Holy
Grail. He clearly sets forth these traditions, and
describes how Powys made imaginative use of them in a way
that is “consummately artistic yet at the same time
frustratingly and brilliantly devious.”
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H.W. Fawkner
John Cowper Powys and the Soul
paperback, 158 pp. ISBN
978 1 874559 39 9
H.W. Fawkner’s a study
of Weymouth Sands and Wolf Solent is a
searching phenomenological examination of negativity in
Powys’s fiction. In Powys’s narratives, trance-like states
of consciousness are often confronted with the irruption of
“bristly reality.” Weymouth Sands is often thought of
as one of the sunniest of Powys’s books, but in Fawkner’s
hands it emerges as one of his most troubling. He is
unsparing in laying bare the fierce honesty of Powys’s
vision, but ultimately generous in exposing the potential
for renewal found in it. “The event of undergoing adversity
has the advantage of confronting humans with truth.”
Personal, lucid and elegant, Fawkner’s book will enrich the
experience of any reader who has responded to these rich and
challenging novels.
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Price: £10 each or £18
for both books together, including inland postage. For overseas
orders, please add 30 per cent.
Copies may be ordered
from John Hodgson, 66 Kynaston Road, London, N16 0ED
For an order
form which can be printed please
click here
to open a PDF (in a new window).
Reviews of both books below.
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Susan Rands reviews
A Glastonbury Romance Revisited
by
W.J.Keith
The Powys Society, 2010. ISBN 978 1 874559 38 2
This scholarly and fascinating book is necessary to all of us
who have been intrigued and puzzled by JCP when he is, in Bill Keith's
words, 'frustratingly and brilliantly devious'. It shows how deeply versed
JCP was in the literature of Arthur and the Grail, and in the history of
Glastonbury, of which like Blake's 'Bard', he 'present, past and future
sees'.
The book is helpfully planned in seven chapters: briefly, on
how JCP came to choose Glastonbury; the theme of the book in general;
Glastonbury as it was at the time of writing; Arthur; Merlin; the Grail, and
Cybele. In other words it starts at the periphery of the subject and moves
closer to the climax of the novel. The Pageant ends exactly half-way through
this book just as it ends the first of the two volumes JCP's American
publisher originally planned.
Professor Keith's aim is to show how 'the mystic patterns and
resonances that derive from stories and traditions engrained in
Glastonbury's rich past' are part of the fabric of A Glastonbury Romance.
JCP had deep knowledge and awareness of what one might call the Matter of
Glastonbury, and drew on it copiously; probably most of us who read the
novel are only dimly aware of this and do not recognize details of the
interconnections and their subtleties. How, it is asked, now that Arthurian
scholarship has advanced so much, does JCP's use of it measure up in this
new climate? The answer is, with surprising aptness; and likewise with all
the twentieth-century accretions to the facts and fictions surrounding
Glastonbury: in some ways JCP seems to have anticipated them.
WJK's chapter 2 is a masterly analysis of the first three
chapters of the novel, telling how JCP in life, and John Crow in the novel,
come to Glastonbury; and introducing the cosmological perspective. WJK
likens this element to that in the medieval mystery plays which were
evolving at the same time as the Grail romances were being written;
so that although it may perplex modern readers it is actually in keeping
with the romance form, the form of A Glastonbury Romance and later of
Porius.
WJK considers the fascinating question of how familiar JCP
was with Gnosticism, and his use of its tenets, about which so much more is
now known; and goes on to discuss the mysterious 'Watchers' . These also
appear in the writings of the extraordinary architect and archaeologist
Bligh Bond, who was busy in Glastonbury from 1908-1922, even more intrigued
by 'her' than John Cowper was. Although best known for his curious book
The Gate of Remembrance (1919), Bond was distinguished in his
professions, and JCP's dismissive remarks about his prototype in A
Glastonbury Romance are significant, for they had ideas in common. For
instance, in The Mystery of Glastonbury and her Immortal Tradition Bligh Bond wrote:
The real and permanent element in the folk-memory
is not a matter of oral repetition at all, but a sub-conscious recall of the
latent memories of all racial experience, which ever subsist so long as the
race endures and -- given the right conditions -- are always ready to emerge
and take shape again, perhaps in some new form, but essentially the same, in
the imagination of the people.
In WJK's next section, 'The Norfolk Connection', he
discusses JCP!s interest in
and use of racial characteristics, further expanded in Porius. The
final
section of this chapter is an extremely interesting discussion of
Stonehenge:
the present fluid state of knowledge about it, how it has been perceived
through the ages, and in the novel, the different ways in which John Crow
and
Mr Evans think of the stones and how their views interact. Once again JCP is
in
some ways more akin to to-day's thought than to that of his
own time.
In the third chapter we are at Glastonbury herself, and learn
what an
extraordinary place it was at the time of JCP's writing, had been and indeed
still is: we meet Lionel Lewis, the myth-purveying vicar; Armitage Robinson,
Dean of Wells and pragmatic historian; Katherine Maltwood, inventor
of the Glastonbury Zodiac; and more recently Dion Fortune and John Michell.
Vis a vis
these real characters, JCP's in the novel are not so far fetched as some
might
think..
Next we come to the very vexed question of Arthur, who is
still obsessing
writers and historians. Was he historical or not? If he had lived and died
(in many versions he is 'to come again') was it his bones that
were dug up in
the abbey grounds in 1191? . Were, in fact, any bones dug up? The sheer
quantity
of scholarship expended on these questions probably exceeds that on
Shakespeare.
But as WJK says, 'an alternative approach, JCP's approach, is to create a
cross section of (for him) contemporary Glastonbury society and record how
its members respond to the story in a number of conflicting ways. We need
to be on our guard against the idea that the story of Arthur is
monolithically
fixed. There are numerous stations on the spectrum of interpretation,
between
the extremes of total acceptance and equally total rejection.' Throughout,
WJK's presentation of the multifarious and seemingly endless material is
masterly, comprehensive and clear. It concludes with an account of the
intriguingly named Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman Samartian
descended from Iranian-speaking Scythians.
The last three chapters focus more closely on the novel, the
first of them showing how JCP substitutes the complex figure of Merlin for
the insubstantial one of Joseph of Arimathea, and the degree to which John
Geard
represents Merlin. The curious word 'Esplumeoir' is discussed at length, and
I cannot resist adding a little to it. Over twenty years ago there lived in
Glastonbury a remarkable young woman. A teacher of the Japanese art of
Aikido,
she was also an expert physiotherapist. Previously, after gaining a
degree in Old Celtic languages, her doctorial thesis, deriving
from these, was on Merlin. Her supervisor was Count Tolstoy, whose book on
Merlin (subject of his lecture
to the Powys Society at the Conference at Exeter University
in 1988) post-dated this thesis. I was privileged to read the thesis and remember from it that
in those ancient manuscripts Merlin was sometimes a bird, the manifestation
of the soul, or souls of dead or wounded warriors; '
Esplumeoir' was the place where he changed his feathers, often a secluded
hazel grove.
Even more complex than Arthur, in its anomalies and
anachronisms, is the Grail, and WJK skilfully traces the use of the word
through the centuries, what it represents and the different forms in which
it appears. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this is conceivably the
best account ever written on this elusive subject , whose only palpable
manifestation is the cup of Holy Communion. But in Romance, the Grail always
appeared in a secular rather than a religious setting: a characteristic in
keeping with its appearances in A Glastonbury Romance. There it
represents the mysterious, and as WJK says, JCP 'may be unique among English
fiction-writers in the twentieth century by virtue of his ability to present
human life as mysterious without limiting it within the confines of
religious belief.'
In the last section WJK summarises the work of the
archaeologists Baring and Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess (1993),
comparing it with Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance (1920),
a book that much influenced JCP, and using both books to illuminate the
final paragraphs of A Glastonbury Romance. Is it known what JCP had
written before Phyllis suggested Cybele as the ending?
WJK warns us how seldom we should take JCP literally when he
uses anthropological terms such as 'Neolithic', 'Bronze Age' or 'Iron Age' .
Nevertheless, JCP's conviction that Neolithic people were peaceful
agriculturists is now being reconsidered.
One is bound to regret that there is no index, but Professor
Keith's book is so well planned, with subtitles, that this is less of
a disadvantage than usual. The notes are neatly managed within the text, and
there are sixteen pages of tempting bibliography. Two of the three books
listed by Francis Pryor have Arthur in the title, and it is of note that the
Sunday Telegraph 'Book of the Week' (23 - 30 May 2010), The Making
of the British Landscape is also by Francis Pryor.
One last related point: an enterprising and industrious
scholar, Tim Hopkinson Ball (recently arrived on the Glastonbury scene from
Norfolk, and author of The Rediscovery of Glastonbury: Frederick Bligh
Bond, Architect of the New Age) has now written and presented a film,
Glastonbury: The Inside Story, about Glastonbury in the 1920s,
including archive film and interviews with local notables, in which he says
... but the greatest Glastonbury novel is, without
doubt, that written by John Cowper Powys, and called, appropriately enough,
'A Glastonbury Romance'. Powys captures something of the magic of early
twentieth century Glastonbury in his book, providing numerous quotes,
possibly the best being: 'There are half a dozen reservoirs of world-magic
on the whole surface of the globe -- Jerusalem... Rome... Mecca... Lhasa...
-- and of these Glastonbury has the largest residue of unused power.
Generations of mankind, aeons of past races, have -- by their concentrated
will -- made Glastonbury miraculous.'
The film ran to full houses for five nights in Street's
capacious theatre, and it is hoped that it will widen the readership both
for JCP and for WJK's A Glastonbury Romance Revisited -- a gem that
none of us should miss.
Susan Rands
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Florence Marie-Laverrou reviews
John Cowper Powys and the Soul
by H. W. Fawkner
The Powys Society, 2010. ISBN 978 1 874559 399
Any reader of John Cowper Powys’s novels is likely to be thrilled by the
publication of a new book by H. W. Fawkner, whose previous works (in
particular The Ecstatic World of John Cowper Powys in 1986)
have shed such stimulating light on Powys’s masterpieces. The new book is no
exception.
It
is composed of two main parts. The first is devoted to Weymouth Sands;
the second focuses on Wolf Solent. Such a chronological inversion is
accounted for by the point H. W. Fawkner makes, that whereas negativity
permeates Weymouth Sands, in Wolf Solent the reader
gets a detailed and far-reaching study of one soul confronted with such
negativity .
The idea H. W. Fawkner develops in the first part of his book is that the
reader of Weymouth Sands should not be dazzled by the magic or
mystical aura of the novel, and should take a closer look at the
all-pervading negativity of the eponymous place. Negativity and wretchedness
are at the core of the novel: what with some characters’ passing states of
mind, others’ intrinsic fascination with sadism, omnipresent in the
elemental imagery of the text. H. W. Fawkner demonstrates how futile any
positive view of life can be in such a context, where negativity turns out
to be neither subjective nor transient but innate and unavoidable. It is
what endures in life. Although the word “negativity” may seem a rather vague
and broad term, making H. W. Fawkner’s reading a highly personal one, the
detailed analysis of the vocabulary and of the recurring metaphors carries
conviction and throws light on the darkest aspects of Weymouth Sands,
urging the reader to read it once again and be on the lookout for all the
diverse modes of negativity.
The study of Wolf Solent follows two distinct threads. First it
revolves around the centrality of the 'Waterloo face', which exemplifies the
unforgettable essence of suffering and completely rocks Wolf’s position in
the world. The Waterloo face triggers the crumbling to pieces of Wolf's
mythology, and exposes his cult of sensations as smug and deeply selfish. It
wreaks subterranean havoc in Wolf’s life, but it takes him a long time – the
whole book in fact – to come to terms with this ensuing chasm and its
consequences, which should not be confused with petty moral matters.
On
the other hand, H. W. Fawkner goes on to distinguish between two types of
sensuality – “frontal sensuality” and “subtilized sensuality” – stressing
Wolf’s overt disgust at and rejection of the first form. The neatly
delineated opposition between the two types of sensuality helps the reader
understand Wolf’s mythology, the elusive nature of which can hardly be
captured by Wolf’s use of “commonplace words for lack of any better ones”
(142). In that respect, the sophisticated analysis of Wolf’s choice of “pure
reflectance” is most illuminating, and helps the reader make sense of the
narrative in spite of its ambiguities and intricacies. Now that Wolf is
haunted by the memory of the Waterloo face, however, his mythology turns out
to be another kind of self-delusive humbug. In the last chapter of the
second part of the study, H. W. Fawkner reunites the two threads of his
analysis, however divergent they may have appeared at first sight. Although
the ups and downs of Wolf’s state of mind may also have something to do with
other confrontations, H. W. Fawkner reaches a convincing conclusion – the
metaphysics of delight, typical of many a Powysian hero, ends up exposed as
fraudulent when confronted with the Waterloo face.
The links between the two main parts of JCP and the Soul are not
always obvious, as there is a mixture of genres and tones. At first sight,
the deep sense of defeatism in the first part could seem to be at odds with
the concluding note of the second part ending with a chapter entitled
“Renewal”. In that respect, it is a pity there is no overall conclusion to
round off the book and stress the link between the modes of negativity in
Weymouth Sands and Wolf’s story as one ending on a harrowing sense of
loss. Nonetheless the two parts are highly readable and full of
ground-breaking and stimulating insights into two of the most well-known
novels by Powys, whose complexities are endless but rewarding.
Florence Marie-Laverrou
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Due for publication in September 2010
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THE JOY OF IT
by Littleton Powys
With an Introduction by PETER TAIT
Littleton Powys listed six reasons why he decided to write about his
life: to correct any errant impressions of his home, his family and
his brothers; to express his thankfulness for his remarkably happy
life; to provide a comparison for the reader with the remarkable
Autobiography
of his brother, John Cowper, with whom, in spite of all their
differences, he had been ‘bound together by the closest ties of
friendship for over sixty years’; as a tribute to the people and
places that had afforded him so much happiness; to pass on his
experiences as a headmaster; and finally, to express the debt he
owed to nature for his happiness. In the course of the book, he
accomplishes each task in turn.
The Joy of It
is a celebration of a life well-lived.
A JACKETED HARDBACK IN
A LIMITED EDITION OF ONE HUNDRED NUMBERED COPIES -
DUE
SEPTEMBER 2010
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A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
by Llewelyn Powys
A Struggle for Life
attempts to illustrate both the evolution of the author’s thought
and writing and the incredible breadth and variety of his interests.
At once personal and universal, the twenty-eight pieces contained in
this volume – one of them published for the first time and many of
them returning to print for the first time in sixty years – tackle
themes such as happiness, nature and celebrate rationalism as an
alternative to dogma and religion.
With locales ranging from colonial Africa to the author’s native
Dorset, Llewelyn Powys’s essays combine poignancy and sincerity with
irony and subversiveness, and should cement his reputation as one of
his generation’s finest stylists, alongside his brothers John Cowper
Powys and T.F. Powys.
DUE
NOVEMBER 2010 |
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KING LOG AND LADY LEA
by Alyse Gregory
With an Introduction by ANTHONY HEAD
In her
second novel, Alyse Gregory recounts the story of Richard and Mary
Holland, a married couple whose seemingly conventional relationship
is threatened by the arrival on the scene of Celia Linton, once the
object of Richard’s attentions several years earlier and now an
alluring young woman. Richard is eager to incorporate her into his
life, but hasn’t bargained for the intangible mutual attraction that
develops between the two females. Underlying this sober tale of love
and death is the theme of war between the sexes, with its unheeded
misconceptions and fevered imaginings, but more profoundly the fear
of loneliness and the poignancy of human isolation.
First
published in 1929, and now hard to find, this is its first reprint.
DUE SEPTEMBER 2010 |
Supplement to Powys Checklist & Readers’ Guide, 2010
A leaflet, in PDF format which will open in a new window, intended
to remedy some of the gaps and errors in our third edition of the
Powys Checklist and Reader's Guide
by Alan Howe, revised
and extended by Stephen Powys Marks, and to bring it
up to date to the end of 2009. Please click
here to download.
Paperback editions of two major JCP
novels from Duckworth in 2010
MAIDEN CASTLE in paperback 25 Mar 2010 £16.99 ISBN:
978-0715638910 496 pages
PORIUS in paperback 22 July 2010 £18.95 ISBN-13:
978-0715637326 768 pages
Two further titles
in the Powys Heritage series from Cecil Woolf
T. F. Powys’s Favourite Bookseller: The Story of Charles Lahr
by Chris Gostick. 32pp. (ISBN 978-1-907286-01-8)
A review by David Goodway
Encounters with John Cowper Powys, a Meditation by Christiane Poussier. 28pp. (ISBN 978-1-907286-00-1)
£6.00 each.
Direct from the
publisher
Cecil Woolf. (A review of both titles appears in the current
issue of the Society's Newsletter, No.68).
For
further details of both booklets please click
here
2009 Publications
THE POWYS JOURNAL
Volume XIX contains articles by Glen Cavaliero,
Arjen Mulder, W.J. Keith, John Dunn, Angelika Reichmann, Jonas Holm
Aagaard, Stephen Powys Marks, Timothy Hyman, with three reviews of
the new edition of PORIUS from Ian Duncan, Richard Maxwell and
Charles Lock. Also included are three more previously unpublished
short stories ('A Pleasant View', 'Our Aunt', 'The Haunted Hill') by T.
F. Powys with an Afterword by Elaine Mencher.
£6.00 inc. p&p (included as part of annual membership
sub.)
Weymouth Sands,
first published in 1934, draws on the author’s vivid childhood
memories of the seaside town to create a haunting backdrop for a
tale of epic significance and power. The novel follows the story of
Jobber Skald, whose obsessive desire to kill the magnate of the town
in vengeance for his contempt for the local quarry workers is
balanced by a redeeming love for a young girl from the Channel
Isles. Alongside these unforgettable protagonists, the novel boasts
a range of remarkable human oddities, including a famous clown and
his mad brother, a naïve Latin teacher and an abortionist. The
intricate interweaving of these characters’ lives is suffused with
Powys’ compassion for the variety, eccentricity and loneliness of
human beings, and offers a moving counterpoint to the vast questions
addressed by the novel, from the power of Eros and the
inscrutability of the universe to the nature of madness.
‘Thousands of baby boom readers who grew up with Tolkein now want to
spend their mature adulthood with the chronicles of Powys.’ The
Independent
‘An
intricate, provocative and living example of the novel which takes
people as it finds them ... The cool, calm impersonability of
Weymouth Sands, and the author’s all but diabolical power to peer
beneath the surface, combine to make it a book of moment.’ The
New York Times
~ Duckworth published Maiden Castle
in paperback in June 2010.
The Liminal Landscape of John Cowper Powys
An
article
by David Ride
Source:
Time and Mind, Volume 2, Number 1, March 2009, pp. 71-76(6)
Publisher:
Berg Publishers
The concept of liminality, the mystic properties of boundaries and
thresholds, is discussed in relation to various landscape elements
such as water/land interfaces, enclaves, and islands. Reasons are
given to identify the Dorset setting of John Cowper Powys's novel
Wolf Solent as a liminal landscape. The literary mechanisms
Powys employs to achieve this status are described: they include
defining a circumscribed area by means of towns referred to by their
real names; renaming places within this boundary to assign special
meaning to them; and naming his characters with geological and
topographical terms, and with the names of animals and plants. In an
overtly liminal event, the novel's hero, Wolf Solent, named after a
strait off the coast of Hampshire, marries Gerda, identified here as
a personification of the Wessex countryside. The novel is Powys's
most autobiographical, and so sheds light on his own philosophy, an
uneasy amalgam of atheism and mysticism.
The full text electronic article is available for purchase by
download from:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/tmdj/2009/00000002/00000001/art00004
Published by The Powys Society:
ASPECTS OF JOHN COWPER POWY'S OWEN GLENDOWER by W. J. Keith
Bill Keith, Emeritus Professor of English at Toronto University,
has written extensively on John Cowper Powys, and will be familiar
to many members of the society from his talks at annual
conferences. His readers’ guides to Autobiography, A
Glastonbury Romance, Porius, and Owen Glendower
can be downloaded from the Powys Society website. The Society has
now published his monograph, “Aspects of John Cowper Powys’s Owen
Glendower”, which explores the background and nature of this
enthralling but often baffling and controversial novel. Bill Keith
describes the historical background to the novel and its ties to
ancient Welsh mythology, the gestation and publication of the book,
its ties to the historical novels of Walter Scott and to
Shakespeare, and its contemporary relevance.
A
paperback of 96 pages priced at £4.75 (including postage) ISBN
978-1874559351 To purchase a copy and pay by cheque please print out an order form
click here.
2008
8 John Cowper Powys Novels reprinted
Faber & Faber's print-on-demand imprint, Faber Finds, has issued
eight of John Cowper Powys's novels in paperback priced around
£15.00.
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.
Paperback. £22.00 ISBN: 0571243150
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 only
precarious mental stability. He is in love with two women, Nance
Herrick and the more unconventional Phillipa Renshaw. This was
Powys' second novel published in 1916. It deploys a rich and
memorable cast of characters. Paperback. £17.00 ISBN: 0571242170
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 US publisher turned it down, Powys made no
effort to place it elsewhere. Indeed, when Powys had finished a
book, he tended to be oddly indifferent to its fate. The novel has
two other unusual features: its locations (Sussex and Greenwich
Village) and Isadora Duncan being the inspiration for Elise, the
dancer and mistress of the protagonist, Richard Storm (based quite
largely on Powys himself). As one would expect from Powys, the
writing is vivid, not least in the descriptions of the Sussex
landscape and the bohemian milieu of Greenwich Village. Paperback.
£15.00 ISBN: 0571242111
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 dilemma: to go on loving his
mistress, Netta Page, or, make a respectable marriage and produce an
heir. Of his early novels (pre Wolf Solent), this one is often
considered to be the most carefully constructed and best organized.
Like them all it contains a gallery of rich, complex characters and
glorious writing. Paperback. £15.00 ISBN: 0571242146
To read an article on The Early Novels of John Cowper Powys
by
Morine Krissdóttir
please click
here
Morwyn
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’, and here, in this strange
fantasy, he gives full vent to his feelings. The main adventures are
set in Hell where the narrator, not named but clearly based on Powys
himself, his dog, Black Peter, Morwyn, his new love and her father,
a vivisector find themselves hurled after a cataclysm on a Welsh
mountain-side. The infernal adventures and encounters are virtuoso
displays of Powys’s extraordinary knowledge of the mythical
underworld.
Atlantis
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 large cast of human
characters but Powys also gives life and speech to inanimates such
as a stone pillar, a wooden club, and an olive shoot. The descent to
the drowned world of Atlantis towards the end of the novel is
memorably described, indeed, Powys himself called it 'the best part
of the book'. Many of Powys's themes, such as the benefits of
matriarchy, the wickedness of priests and the evils of modern
science which condones vivisection are given full rein in this odd
but compelling work.
The Brazen Head
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 amalgam of all
the qualities that make John Cowper Powys unique. The love-story of
Lil-Umbra and Raymond de Laon, and the quest of the Mongolian giant,
Peleg, for Ghosta, the girl seen, loved, and lost on the
battlefield, are intermingled with the historical, theological and
magical threads which form the brocade of this novel. Dominating all
is the mysterious creation of Roger Bacon one of the boldest as well
as most intricate of Powys' world-changing inventions. Professor G.
Wilson Knight called this 'A book of wisdom and wonders'.
The Inmates
'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 an element in life'. So wrote John
Cowper Powys himself in his prefatory note to this novel first
published in 1952. In this 'wild book' Powys creates a 'Philosophy
of the Demented' expressing fundamental truths about madness and
sanity. Most of the novel, though, like so much of his later
fiction, it is more a fantasy, takes place in Glint Hall, a lunatic
asylum. The two main characters are John Hush and Tenna Sheer. They
fall in love. The rapidly developing, psychologically complex
narrative centres on 'Hush's organization of a conspiracy of revolt
amongst the most fantastically crazy of the inmates'. It makes for a
strange, disturbing, and yet, at times, funny read.
To
read an article on The Late Novels of John Cowper Powys by
Morine Krissdóttir
please click
here
JOHN
COWPER POWYS AND THE MAGICAL QUEST
A
paperback edition of John Cowper Powys and the Magical Quest
by Morine Krissdóttir was published by Faber Finds on 16 April 2009.
[ISBN: 9780571251063 - 220 pages - Price: £16.00]
__________________________________________________________________________
John Cowper Powys Letters
From
CECIL WOOLF Publishers two
long-awaited additions to the Uniform Edition of the
Collected Letters of John Cowper Powys:
The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Dorothy Richardson
(edited by Janet Fouli)
272 pp. ISBN 978-1-897967-27-0 £35.00
The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Emma Goldman
(edited by David Goodway)
188 pp. ISBN 978-1-897967-84-3 £30.00
Available from: Cecil Woolf Publishers. 1 Mornington Place, London
NW1 7RP
Telephone/Fax 020 7387 2394
Both volumes were reviewed in the July 2008 issue of the Newsletter
and can be read online
here.
Jeff Bursey's review of The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Emma
Goldman can be read
here
For further details of both titles and a SPECIAL OFFER TO MEMBERS OF
THE POWYS SOCIETY please click
here.
UNCLAY
and
KINDNESS IN A CORNER
Paperback editions of two T. F. Powys novels have been published by
The Sundial Press
UNCLAY
(with an Introduction by John Gray)
KINDNESS IN A CORNER
(with an Introduction by Glen Cavaliero)
The
first reprint of UNCLAY since its original publication (1931)
and its first appearance in paperback. The first reprint of
KINDNESS IN A CORNER since 1941.
“In my view, Unclay is Powys's crowning achievement, since it
contains the fullest artistic expression of his meditations on life,
beauty, evil, love, and death.” - Marius Buning (author of
T.F. Powys: A Modern Allegorist)
‘Theodore Powys is a master of English, and for this, for the
exquisite texture of expression, he should be read, if for nothing
else. But the reading will disclose much else, and especially a
genius so rare it seems not of this earth, a humanness of spirit not
frequently to be encountered, and a wit so exotic it will seem at
times little other than perverse. And Kindness in a Corner
displays all the Powys characteristics in their fullness and at
their best.’ – New York Times
Both
are available directly from the publisher. Click
here for a link
RETHINKING POWYS
Critical Essays on John Cowper Powys
(Paperback)
edited and introduced by Jeremy Mark Robinson
ISBN-13: 9781861711670
A
new collection of essays. H.W. Fawkner's essay ìVenusî explores
issues of reading, movement, love and sex, the 'amorous self', and
affectivity in A Glastonbury Romance. Ian Hughes looks at the
genre of Powys's novels, and how the philosophical romances were
influenced by Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean. Janina
Nordius discusses the crucial Powys theme of (transcendental)
solitude in the key novel of the Powys-self alone, Wolf Solent.
Joe Boulter's essay concentrates on the affinities between modernism
and postmodernism, pragmatism and deconstruction, in one of Powys's
late novels, The Inmates, via thinkers such as William James,
Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
From Crescent Moon Publishing
P.O.
Box 393, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 5XU
Website:
www.crescentmoon.org.uk
Also published by Crescent Moon on 1st Feb 2008, a
revised edition in paperback (116 pages) of Amorous Life: John
Cowper Powys and the Manifestation of Affectivity by H.W.
Fawkner. £10.00
WESSEX
ESSAYS
Published in 2008, an attractive
second volume of twenty-six Wessex Essays by Llewelyn Powys
STILL BLUE BEAUTY
in paperback at £9.99
from
The Sundial Press ISBN-13:
9780955152375
(lncluding four previously
uncollected essays)
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CONTENTS:
The Sea! The Sea! The Sea! - Lodmoor - The Memory of One Day - A
Stonehenge in Miniature - The Father of Dorset - A Pond - High
Chaldon - A Royal Rebel - Somerset Names - Montacute Hill - The
Village Shop - The Wordsworths in Dorset - The World Is New! - A
Visit by Moonlight - Shaftesbury: Champion of the Poor - A Wish for
Freedom - Athelney: In the Steps of King Alfred - Wookey Hole -
Green Corners of Dorset - Recollections of Thomas Hardy - A Foolish
Razorbill - A Richer Treasure - Weymouth Memories - The Shambles
Fog-Horn - Dorchester Lives
Companion volume
DURDLE DOOR TO
DARTMOOR
Wessex Essays of
Llewelyn Powys
in paperback at £9.99
from
The Sundial Press
ISBN-13: 9780955152344
CONTENTS:
The Durdle Door - The White Nose - A Bronze Age Valley - Bats Head
-The Fossil Forest - The Castle Park of East Lulworth - St Aldhelm’s
Head - Studland - Corfe Castle - Herring Gulls - Stalbridge Rectory
- The River Yeo - Cerne Abbas - Stinsford Churchyard - The Grave of
William Barnes - Weymouth Harbour
-
Portland - A Famous Wreck - Hardy’s Monument - The Swannery Bell at
Abbotsbury - Lyme Regis - Montacute House - Ham Hill - On the Other
Side of the Quantocks - Exmoor
-
Dartmoor
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