Background

Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys, who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset, for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendant of the poet William Cowper. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also talented. His two younger brothers Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939) and Theodore Francis Powys were well-known writers, while his sister Philippa published a novel and some poetry. Another sister Marian Powys was an authority on lace and lace-making and published a book on this subject. 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.

Education

Powys studied at Sherborne School and graduated from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, June 1894.

On 23 July 1962, Powys, who was 90, was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in absentia, by the University of Wales at Swansea, where he was described as "patriarch of the literature of these islands".

Career

After attending Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, he combined writing with extensive lecturing in England and America, where he lived from 1928 to 1934. His first poems appeared in 1899, and he later published Wolfsbane Rhymes (1916), Mandragora (1917), and Samphire (1922). His chief fame rests on such novels as Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932), Owen Glendower (1940), and The Inmates (1952). Powys presents a view of man as equally capable of the most degraded and the most magnanimous acts. This attitude appears also in his Autobiography (1934) and in essays such as The Meaning of Culture (1929), A Philosophy of Solitude (1933), and Obstinate Cymric (1947).

Achievements

• In 1958 "Powys was presented with the Bronze Plaque of the Hamburg Free Academy of Arts in recognition of his outstanding services to literature and philosophy". Then on 23 July 1962, Powys, who was 90, was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in absentia, by the University of Wales at Swansea, where he was described as "patriarch of the literature of these islands". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, 1959 and 1962.
  
  Powys's works have been translated into French, German, Swedish, Japanese, etc.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Weymouth Sands

    (Chronicles the intertwined lives of the residents of the ...)

  • A Glastonbury Romance

    ( A Glastonbury Romance, first published in 1932, is Powy...)

  • Porius

    (Widely regarded as Powys's finest achievement in fiction,...)

  • Autobiography

    ('I have tried to write my life as if I were confessing to...)

Views

Quotations: "Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life. "

"Most of the pathetic scenes in almost everybody's life are scenes unnoted by anyone and totally disregarded by the person in question. "

"If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose. "

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "The Spanish Civil War shaped the political consciousness of a whole generation, which overwhelmingly saw it as representing heroic resistance to Fascism. Goldman and J. C. Powys did not belong to that generation – they belonged to the generation of its parents or, even, grandparents. And rather than resistance to Fascism, it was the social achievements of the Spanish Revolution that inspired them. In that they stand alone, among figures of the front rank, with Read and Orwell…" (by David Goodway)

Connections

He married Margaret Lyon. They had a son, Littleton Alfred.

In 1921 he met Phyllis Playter, the twenty-six-year-old daughter of industrialist and business man Franklin Playter. 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.

Father:

Charles Francis Powys

He was born in 1843 and died in 1923.

Mother:

Mary Cowper Johnson

She was a descendant of the poet William Cowper.

Sister:

Catharine Edith Philippa Powys

She was a British novelist and poet.

Son:

Littleton Alfred

He was born in 1902.

Brother:

Llewelyn Powys

He was a British novelist and essayist.

Brother:

Theodore Francis Powys

He is best remembered for his allegorical novel Mr. Weston's Good Wine (1927), where Weston the wine merchant is evidently God.

First wife:

Margaret Lyon

They married on 6 April 1896.

Friend:

Isadora Duncan

Lover:

Phyllis Playter

She died in 1982.

References

• John Cowper Powys and the Magical Quest