|
Wolf Solent
Wolf Solent
is the first of the great novels of John Cowper Powys and
caused quite a stir when it debuted in
1929, garnering praise from many of the top writers of the day
including Conrad Aiken and Theodore Dreiser. Wolf Solent
has been frequently published in Britain and America from 1929
onwards, notably in paperback by Penguin in Britain.
In it the title character returns to the
Wessex countryside, which remains steeped in mysticism and romance.
The
novel is a momentous piece of work . . . of transcendent interest
and great beauty. - The New York Times Book Review
A Glastonbury Romance
Described as "the only novel produced by an English writer that
can fairly be compared with the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski"
by George Steiner in ‘The New Yorker’ and “The book of the century”
by Margaret Drabble in ‘The Telegraph’. John Cowper Powys has been
acclaimed by some of the greatest minds of the past century, from Henry
Miller (‘my first living idol’) to George Steiner (‘supreme in
English fiction after Hardy’) to Robertson Davies (‘a great
writer’). A Glastonbury Romance, first published in 1932, is
regarded by many as his masterwork, an epic novel of terrific
cumulative force and lyrical intensity. In it, he probes the
mystical and spiritual ethos of the small English village of
Glastonbury, and the effect upon its inhabitants of a mythical
tradition from the remotest past of human history - the legend of
the Grail. Powys's rich iconography interweaves the ancient with the
modern, the historical with the legendary, and the imaginative
within man with the natural world outside him to create a book of
astonishing scope and beauty.
Weymouth Sands
Powys tells the story of Jobber Skald - a large, somewhat brutish
man, obsessed with the urge to kill the local magnate of the town
because of the man's contempt for the workers of the local quarry -
and his redeeming love for Perdita Wane, a young girl from the
Channel Islands. Weymouth Sands boasts a striking collection
of human oddities including a famous clown, his mad brother, a naive
Latin teacher, a young philosopher, and an abortionist.
Maiden Castle
At the centre of the novel is the aptly named Dud No-man, a
historical novelist widowed after a yearlong unconsummated marriage
to a woman who continues to haunt him. Inspired by pity and his own
deep loneliness, Dud takes Wizzie Ravelston, an itinerant circus
performer, into his home and heart. Their awkward yet endearing
efforts to create a life together unfold in counterpoint to the
romantic and familial relationships that sizzle and simmer in the
village of Dorchester. Yet even as the characters in Maiden Castle
struggle with the perplexities of love, desire and faith -
readjusting their sights and affections - it is the looming fortress
of Maiden Castle that exerts the otherworldly force that irrevocably
determines the course of their lives.
Owen Glendower
It is the year 1400, and Wales is on the brink of a bloody
revolt. At a market fair on the banks of the River Dee, a mad rebel
priest and his beautiful companion are condemned to be burned at the
stake. To their rescue rides the unlikely figure of Rhisiart, a
young Oxford scholar, whose fate will be entangled with that of Owen
Glendower, the last true Prince of Wales - a man called, at times
against his will, to fulfill the prophesied role of national
redeemer. Psychologically complex, sensuous in its language, vivid
in its evocation of a period shrouded by myth, ‘Owen Glendower’
tells a compelling story of war, love, and magic.
Porius
"Porius stood upon the
low square tower above the Southern Gate of Mynydd-y-Gaer, and
looked down on the wide stretching valley below." So begins one of
the most unique novels of twentieth-century literature, by one of
its most ‘extraordinary, neglected geniuses,’ said Robertson Davies
of John Cowper Powys.
Powys thought Porius his
masterpiece, but because of the paper shortage after World War II
and the novel's lengthiness, he could not find a publisher for it.
Only after he cut one-third from it was it accepted. This new
edition (Overlook, 2007) not only brings Porius back into print, but
makes the original book at last available to readers.
Set in the geographic
confines of Powys's own homeland of Northern Wales, Porius takes
place in the course of a mere eight October days in 499 A.D., when
King Arthur - a key character in the novel, along with Myrddin Wyllt,
or Merlin - was attempting to persuade the people of Britian to
repel the barbaric Saxon invaders. Porius, the only child of Prince
Einion of Edeyrnion, is the main character who is sent on a journey
that is both historical melodrama and satirical allegory.
A complex novel, Porius
is a mixture of mystery and philosophy on a huge narrative scale, as
if Nabokov or Pynchon tried to compress Dostoevsky into a Ulyssean
mold. Writing in The New Yorker, George Steiner has said of the
abridged Porius that it "combines [a] Shakespearean-epic sweep of
historicity with a Jamesian finesse of psychological detail and
acuity. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, which I believe to be the
American masterpiece after Melville, is a smaller thing by
comparison."
This new, and first
complete, edition of the novel substantiates both Steiner's
judgement and Powys's claim for Porius as his masterpiece.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Published between A Glastonbury Romance and Maiden
Castle AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a vital and uninhibited self-portrait by
one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. With
unparalleled wit, candour, and lyricism, Powys, at the age of sixty,
set out to chronicle his life. He wrote: '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 it as if I were going to be
executed when it was finished. I have tried to write it as if I were
both God and the Devil.' AUTOBIOGRAPHY conveys Powys's contagious
excitement of his discovery of books and men and his unceasing
discovery of himself, as well as fascinating reminiscences of the
remarkable journeys, both geographic and intellectual, of his life.
John Cowper Powys's works have been described as 'the only novels
produced by an English writer that can fairly be compared to the
fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky...with an immensity to which only
Blake could provide a parallel in English literature' (George
Steiner, The New Yorker). His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a work that stands
alone in autobiographical literature and is the one of the most
admired of his books. |
.jpg)
.jpg)
