The Powys Review, a periodical devoted to the work of the Powys family — in particular to the writers John Cowper Powys, T. F. Powys and Llewelyn Powys and their literary milieu — was published in thirty-two numbers between 1977 and 1997, all of them edited by Belinda Humfrey. Each printed volume contained a single number of the journal, except for the final three volumes which contained Numbers 27 & 28, 29 & 30, and 31 & 32 respectively.
This complete digital version of all thirty-two numbers of The Powys Review in PDF format renders the text as it appeared in the original printed copy, and is intended to make available to a new generation of readers a body of commentary and scholarship on this extraordinary family which would otherwise become increasingly inaccessible.
Errors and permissions
The Powys Society takes responsibility for any typographical errors introduced in the digital scanning of the text, and would be grateful if readers who spot any such errors could contact Kevin Taylor at kjt8422@gmail.com. While efforts have been made to obtain relevant permissions, any readers with copyright concerns should likewise bring them to the attention of the Society as above.
Note on ‘numbers’ and ‘volumes’:
The Powys Review Index calls each number a ‘volume’. This clashes with the volume designation introduced from Number 5, Volume II i, following which a new ‘volume’ started every four ‘numbers’. Each number is designated below with its respective date and ‘volume’ number as printed in the original [with amendments in square brackets], in case this information is needed to trace citations.
Marguerite Tjader John Cowper Powys and Theodore Dreiser: A Friendship
Norman Bryson Universe and “Multiverse”: John Cowper Powys as a Critic of Dreiser's Fiction
John Cowper Powys Four Essays on Dreiser: Theodore Dreiser [The ‘Genius’] (1915), An American Tragedy (1926),
Dreiser (1932), Introduction to Notes on Life (1946)
John Cowper PowysElusive America (1927), Farewell to America (1935)
Ned Lukacher Notre-Homme-des-Fleurs: Wolf Solent’s Metaphoric Legends
Jack Clemo Mappowder Revisited
Peter John Foss Llewelyn Powys: Towards a Reconsideration
Letters to the Editor
Reviews
Jay Martin Always Merry and Bright / The Life of Henry Miller / An Unauthorised Biography. ARNOLD GOLDMAN
Roland Mathias Snipe's Castle. LESLIE NORRIS
Glen Cavaliero A Reading of E. M. Forster. RICHARD PARKINSON
Gamel Woolsey Twenty Eight Sonnets; The Last Leaf Falls; Middle Earth. SALLY JONES
Kenneth Hopkins Llewelyn Powys, An Essay. ELIZABETH HARVEY
Cedric Hentschel The Improbable Belligerent: The Role of John Cowper Powys in Two World Wars
Ichiro Hara John Cowper Powys and Zen
Cicely Hill “Susukeshi Hina Mo”: John Cowper Powys and the Chuang-Tse Legacy
John Cowper Powys The Philosopher Kwang (1923)
Ian Hughes Allusion, Illusion, and Reality: Fact and Fiction in Wolf Solent
John Cowper PowysWolf Solent: a letter to his brother Llewelyn
Sylvia Townsend Warner East Chaldon and T.F. Powys
Glen Cavaliero The Powys Family and Dorset
Marius Buning Mappowder Revisited: T.F. Powys's Reading in Retirement
Denys Val Baker The Powys Family: Some Memories of the Mid-Forties
Letters to the Editor
Reviews
Belinda Humfrey, ed. Recollections of the Powys Brothers. JEREMY HOOKER
Keith Sagar The Life of D. H. Lawrence: An Illustrated Biography. JOHN WORTHEN
Myron Matlaw, ed. American Popular Entertainment: Papers and Proceedings of the Conference on the History of American Popular Entertainment (Lincoln Center, 1977). PETER DAVISON
V. S. Pritchett The Myth Makers. T. J. WINNIFRITH
Robert Gittings The Older Hardy. T. R. M. CREIGHTON
Phyllis Rose Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf. ALLEN McLAURIN
Charles Osborne W. H. Auden, The Life of a Poet. LAWRENCE NORMAND
Gerald Brenan Thoughts in a Dry Season: A Miscellany. JOHN BATCHELOR
Michel Pouillard Woman and Women in T.F. Powys’s Novels
lan Hughes A Poor Ragged Maiden: The Textual History of Maiden Castle
T.J. Diffey John Cowper Powys and Thomas Hardy
Furse Swann Thomas Hardy and the “Appetite for Joy”
Charles Lock Confessions of Two Brothers
Peter Foss The Confessions of a Diarist
Gamel Woolsey A Selection of her Letters to Llewelyn Powys 1930-1939
edited by KENNETH HOPKINS
Alyse Gregory Some Letters to Mary Casey
Reviews
Mary Casey Full Circle; Christophoros. KIM TAPLIN
G.H. Neville, ed. Carl Baron A Memoir of D.H. Lawrence (The Betrayal); D.H. Lawrence, ed. Mara Kalnins Apocalypse and Other Writings on Revelation. GRAHAM HOLDERNESS
Rex Hunter And Tomorrow Comes. PETER FOSS
Sydney Bolt A Preface to James Joyce; Dominic Manganiello Joyce’s Politics. MARIUS BUNING
Helen Gardner In Defence of the Imagination. ALLEN SAMUELS
Claire Harman, ed. The Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner. BERNARD JONES
Kathleen Raine, ed. Brian Keeble The Inner Journey of the Poet;
Sandra Anstey, ed. Critical Writings on R. S. Thomas. SIMON BARKER
Publications Received:
Bernard Jones William Barnes; Thomas Hardy. G.CAVALIERO
Jeremy Hooker and Gweno Lewis, eds. Selected Poems of Alun
Lewis. JOHN IDRIS JONES
John Cowper Powys Llewelyn Powys, Writer (from “Four Brothers”, 1925)
Ian Hughes A Virgin with No Name: The Beginnings of Maiden Castle
Susan RandsMaiden Castle: Symbol, Theme and Personality
Angela BlaenMaiden Castle and the Celtic Calendar
John Cowper Powys The Magic of Detachment (1933) Egotism and Impersonality (1934)
R.G. Felton: To J.C. Powys
David Goodway The Politics of John Cowper Powys
Jack V. Barbera A Powys’s Bridal Night and Stevie Smith
Bryn Gunnell T.F Powys in his Time
Simon Barker “Embroiderers of Tales”, Review-article: Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1980 Raymond Garlick & Roland Mathias, eds.
Reviews
Roland Mathias Burning Brambles: Selected Poems 1944-1979. EDWIN MORGAN
J. Lawrence Mitchell T.F Powys. MARIUS BUNING
C. Hentschel, ed. Powys to Eric the Red: The Letters . . . to Sven Erik Täckmark; R. Blackmore, ed. Powys to Knight: The Letters . . . to G. R. Wilson Knight.
MORINE KRISSDOTTIR
C. Hentschel, ed. Powys to Eric the Red: The Letters . . . to Sven Erik Täckmark. GÖRAN BÖRG (tr.) LAURIE THOMPSON
Anne Wilson Traditional Romance and Tale. MALDWYN MILLS
John Pilling Autobiography and Imagination: Studies in Self-Scrutiny.
ANDREW HASSAM
Frances Spalding Vanessa Bell. JUDITH COLLINS
C. A. Hankin, ed. The Letters of John Middleton Murray to Katherine Mansfield. H.P. COLLINS
Glen Cavaliero Charles Williams, Poet of Theology. MURRAY J. EVANS
Bernard Oldsey, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 15: British Novelists, 1930-1959. PETER MILES
Roland Mathias John Cowper Powys and ‘Wales’. A Limited Study
Colin Style On Hardy’s Sacred Ground: John Cowper Powys’s Weymouth Sands
Peter G. ChristensenMiddlemarch: A Point of Reference in Weymouth Sands
Margaret Moran Premonitory Hints and Embryo Suggestions in J.C. Powys’s Wood and Stone and Rodmoor
G. Wilson Knight: The Editor’s Preface
Francis Berry G. Wilson Knight: His Life and Work
Reviews
Gillian Clarke Selected Poems. ANN STEVENSON
Gwyn A. Williams When was Wales? A History of the Welsh;
Wynford Vaughan Thomas Wales: A History.
PAUL BENNETT MORGAN
John Cowper Powys Paddock Calls. ANTHONY HEAD
Valentine Ackland For Sylvia: An Honest Account. CLAIRE HARMAN
Kenneth Hopkins, ed. The Letters of Gamel Woolsey To Llewelyn Powys, 1900-1939;
The Collected Poems of Gamel Woolsey. JOHN HARRIS [misspelt as HARRIES]
Richard Taylor, ed. Emma Hardy Diaries. BARRIE SAYWOOD
Patrick Parrinder James Joyce. WILLIAM BAKER
Kenneth Hopkins Bertrand Russell and Gamel Woolsey. CARL SPADONI
J. Lawrence Mitchell In search of T.F. Powys: the visual record
T.F. Powys: A Checklist of drawings, paintings and photographic portraits
T.F. Powys A story: The White Spider
Jeremy Hooker Thomas Hardy, John Cowper Powys and Wessex
Edmund Cusick A Study in the Symbolism of John Cowper Powys’s Mandragora (1917)
Susan Rands The Topicality of A Glastonbury Romance
Belinda Humfrey Kraken to Sea Serpent: John Cowper Powys and Huw Menai
John Cowper Powys to Huw Menai: Selected Letters, 1939-1947
Littleton Alfred Powys A Talk between Kathleen Tranter and Susan Rands
Reviews
Geoffrey Ashe Mythology of the British Isles;
Graeme Fife Arthur the King: The Theme Behind the Legends.
JOHN MATTHEWS
Anne Wilson The Magical Quest: the Use of Magic in Arthurian Romance. MALDWYN MILLS
Linda Gowans Cei and the Arthurian Legend; Richard Barber, ed. Arthurian Literature IX.
RACHEL BROMWICH
John S. Mebane Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age:
The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson and Shakespeare. GARETH ROBERTS
Letters to Lalage: The Letters of Charles Williams to Lois Lang-Sims Introduction by Glen Cavaliero. STEPHEN MEDCALF
Fredric S. Colwell Rivermen: A Romantic Iconography of the River and the Source. MICHAEL O'NEILL
William Anderson Green Man: The Archetype of our Oneness with the Earth. TONY HALLETT
Anthony Head, ed. The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Ichiro Hara;
Paul Roberts, ed. The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Hal W. and Violet Trovillion.
IAN HUGHES
Peter Faulkner, ed. William Morris, Selected Poems. BARBARA DENNIS
Raymond Garlick Four Poems on John Cowper Powys:
Extract from Scene Seven of Blaenau Observed (1956); ‘Seeing’, ‘Death of an Actor’;
and ‘The Immortals’ (from Landscapes and Figures (1964))
Joe Boulter John Cowper Powys’s [De]construction of Welsh Identity in Porius
Robin Wood Queer Attacks and Fits: Epilepsy and Ecstatic Experiences in the Novels
of J.C. Powys
Jacqueline Peltier Powys - and the Pleasures of Proust?
Susan Rands The Glastonbury Libel
Elmar Schenkel From Powys to Pooh: Some Versions of Taoism
in British and American Literature
John Cowper Powys Poem: ‘The Occult Madonna’ (1906)
Joseph Resnick Remembering John Cowper Powys
Reviews
Gloria G. Fromm, ed. Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters
of Dorothy Richardson. ROBIN WOOD
Anthony Head, ed. Powys to Sea Eagle: The Letters of John Cowper Powys
to Philippa Powys. J.S. RODMAN
Oliver and Christopher Wilkinson, eds. Jack and Frances: The Love Letters
of John Cowper Powys and Frances Gregg, 2 vols.
PETER EASINGWOOD
Frances Gregg The Mystic Leeway ed. Ben Jones. BELINDA HUMFREY
Morine Krissdottir, ed. Petrushka and the Dancer,
The Diaries of John Cowper Powys, 1929-1939. RODNEY AITCHTEY
Glen Cavaliero A Steeple on a Hill. K. E. SMITH
Notes on Contributors
Cover photograph: John Cowper Powys in the doorway of 1 Waterloo, Blaenau Ffestiniog
(Photograph: Raymond Garlick)
Errors and permissions
Number 1, Spring 1977
Number 2, Winter 1977 
Number 3, Summer 1978
Number 4, Winter/Spring 1978/1979
Number 5, Summer 1979, Volume II i
Number 6, Winter/Spring 1979/1980, Volume II ii
Number 7, Winter 1980, Volume II iii
Number 8, 1980/1981, Volume II iv
Number 9, 1981/1982, Volume III i.
Number 10, 1981/1982 (Spring 1982), Volume III ii
Number 11, 1982/1983, Volume III iii
Number 12, 1982/1983 (Spring 1983), Volume III iv
Number 13,1983/1984, Volume IV i
Number 14, 1984, Volume IV ii
Number 15, 1984/1985, Volume IV iii
Number 16, 1985, Volume IV iv
Number 17, 1985, Volume V i
Number 18, 1986, Volume V ii
Number 19, 1986, Volume V iii
Number 20, 1987, Volume V iv
Number 21, 1987-1988, Volume VI i
Number 22, 1988, Volume VI ii
Number 23, 1989, Volume VI iii
Number 24, 1989, Volume VI iv
Number 25, 1990, Volume VIII i [properly VII i]
Number 26, 1991, Volume VIII ii [properly VII ii]
Numbers 27 & 28, 1992-93, Volumes VII iii & iv
Numbers 29 & 30, [1995], Volumes VIII i & ii
Numbers 31 & 32, [1997], Volumes VIII iii & iv