61-609: Weymouth Sands is a novel by John Cowper Powys , which was written in rural upper New York State and published in February 1934 in New York City by Simon and Schuster . It was published in Britain as Jobber Skald in 1935 by John Lane. Weymouth Sands was the third of John Cowper Powys 's so-called Wessex novels, which include Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932), and Maiden Castle (1936). Powys
122-440: A collection of literary essays, Visions and Revisions . This was published by the manager of his lecture tours, Arnold Shaw, as were the subsequent Suspended Judgements: Essays on Books and Sensations (1916) and One Hundred Best Books (1916). Visions and Revisions went through four impressions in 16 months. In the next 30 years he published essay collection, The Enjoyment of Literature (1938) ( The Pleasures of Literature in
183-469: A dozen main plots and as many minor ones, and "the author takes us into every street and alley in Weymouth". Powys's paternal grandmother lived in Weymouth, and when his father became a curate in nearby Dorchester , the family took temporary lodgings behind Brunswick Terrace, where she lived in 1879. Weymouth remained throughout Powys's life the place where he was most at home and "[a]lways in [his] memory
244-561: A libel lawsuit. Another important work, Autobiography , was published in 1934. 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. Corwen
305-606: A novel which is set in on the Isle of Portland where Jobber Skald, the protagonist of Weymouth Sands , comes from. Weymouth Sands is the title of the American first edition and an English edition then appeared in 1935, but prior to its publication Powys and his English publishers were successfully sued for libel by Gerard Hodgkinson , who claimed that the character of Philip Crow in A Glastonbury Romance had been based on him. The damages awarded crippled Powys financially, and he
366-480: A number of books on architectural subjects. 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. Powys's first employment was teaching in girls' schools in Brighton , and then Eastbourne . His first published works were two highly derivative collections of poetry published in
427-519: A world of change like our own". The novel was conceived at a time when the " Spanish Civil War was a major topic of public debate" and completed on 24 December 1939, a few months after World War II had begun. Porius is set mainly in Corwen. The events take place in the week of "October 18, to October 25, A.D. 499", during a historical period when, Powys claims, "There appears to be an absolute blank, as far as documentary evidence goes, with regard to
488-528: Is a celebration of the seaside town [Powys] had loved as a child, but its tone is far from innocent. The novel features a sinister clown figure and Punch and Judy shows: Powys was not one to shy away from the suggestions of violence and child sex abuse that are now routinely associated with such entertainments." Philosopher John Gray comments that John Cowper Powys John Cowper Powys ( / ˈ k uː p ər ˈ p oʊ ɪ s / KOO -pər POH -iss ; 8 October 1872 – 17 June 1963)
549-521: Is a small village and civil parish in Derbyshire , 4 miles (6 km) south-east of Ashbourne . The population of the civil parish as taken at the 2011 Census was 270. It is situated in the countryside on top of a small hill. Shirley was mentioned in the Domesday book as belonging to Henry de Ferrers and being worth forty shillings. In the nineteenth century St Michael's Church, Shirley
610-515: Is another possible influence. A central aspect of A Glastonbury Romance is the attempt by John Geard, an ex-minister now the Mayor of Glastonbury, to restore Glastonbury to its medieval glory as a place of religious pilgrimage. On the other hand, the Glastonbury industrialist Philip Crow, along with John and Mary Crow and Tom Barter, who are, like him, from Norfolk, view the myths and legends of
671-538: Is clear from Powys's diaries that his new-found success was much helped by the stability that his relationship with Phyllis Playter gave him and her frequent advice on his work in progress. A Glastonbury Romance sold particularly well in its British edition, though this was of little avail as it was the subject of an expensive libel case brought by Gerard Hodgkinson , the owner of the Wookey Hole Caves , who felt himself identifiably and unfairly portrayed in
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#1732798363946732-403: Is concerned with is an ecstatic response to the natural world, epiphanies such as Wordsworth describes in his " Ode: Intimations of Immortality ", with an important difference that Powys believes that the ecstasy of the young child can be retained by an adult who actively cultivates the power of the imagination. Some have compared this to Zen and such contemplative practices, and for Powys, and
793-429: Is dissatisfied with what Powys has done with it, seeing his approach to the novel as "so alien to the temper of the age as to be impossible for many people to take seriously". Yet Annie Dillard sees Powys as "a powerful genius, whose novels stir us deeply." Notable throughout his career is the admiration of novelists as diverse as Theodore Dreiser , Henry Miller , Iris Murdoch , Margaret Drabble , James Purdy , and
854-621: Is important to his works. So is elemental philosophy in his characters' lives. 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. Powys
915-717: The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection . Powys was also associated with the National Anti-Vivisection Society , where he met Evalyn Westacott, author of A Century of Vivisection and Anti-Vivisection (1949), who cited Powys arguments against vivisection, which Powys came to see as the worst of all crimes. There then followed two major historical novels set in Wales, Owen Glendower (1941) and Porius (1951). The first deals with
976-637: The University of Wales at Swansea , as "patriarch of the literature of these islands". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Enid Starkie in 1958 and by G. Wilson Knight in 1959 and 1962. Powys's works have been translated into French, German, Swedish, Japanese, and other languages. Numerous books, etc. by, or about Powys, can be read online at "John Cowper Powys" Internet Archive Shirley, Derbyshire Shirley
1037-620: The 1890s. He worked from 1898 as an Extension lecturer throughout England, for both Oxford and Cambridge Universities . 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. He spent his summers in England. During this time he travelled the length and breadth of the US, as well as into Canada. Powys's marriage
1098-541: 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". 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. In
1159-463: The UK), three studies of writers, Dorothy Richardson (1931), Dostoievsky (1947), and Rabelais (1948), and journal essays on various writers such as Theodore Dreiser , Marcel Proust , James Joyce , and D. H. Lawrence . There is also a work on John Keats , part of which was published posthumously, and a study of Aristophanes that Powys was working on in his later years. Powys's literary criticism
1220-665: The academic critics George Painter , G. Wilson Knight , George Steiner , Harald Fawkner and Jerome McGann . The film director John Boorman wrote in his autobiography of contemplating a movie adaptation of A Glastonbury Romance early in his career. 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, aged 90, he gained an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in absentia from
1281-538: The academic sense; in a bookstore the appropriate section might be self-help . Powys describes A Philosophy of Solitude (1933) as a "short textbook of the various mental tricks by which the human soul can obtain […] comparative happiness beneath the normal burden of human fate". Powys's various works of popular philosophy may seem mere potboilers, written to help his finances as he worked on his novels, but critics like Denis Lane, Harald Fawkner and Janina Nordius see in them insight into "the intellectual structures that form
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#17327983639461342-548: The ancestral title of Prince of Powys at his manor house of Glyndyfrdwy , then in the parish of Corwen. In September 1935, Phyllis Playter had suggested he should write a historical novel about Owain Glyndŵr. An important aspect of Owen Glendower are historical parallels between the beginning of the 15th century and the late 1930s and early 1940s: "A sense of contemporataneousness is ever present in Owen Glendower . We are in
1403-538: The character of Philip Crow. According to Powys, this novel's "heroine is the Grail ", and its central concern is with the various myths, legends and history associated with Glastonbury. Not only is A Glastonbury Romance concerned with the legend that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Grail, a vessel containing the blood of Christ, to the town, but the further tradition that King Arthur was buried there. Furthermore one of
1464-458: The crowning achievement of Powys's maturity, but others are repelled by its obscurity. It was originally cut severely for publication, but in recent years two attempts have been made to recreate Powys's original intent. It is not surprising that John Cowper Powys, after he moved to Corwen, decided to begin a novel about Owain Glyndŵr, as it was in Corwen that Glyndŵr's rebellion against Henry IV began on 16 September 1400, when he formally assumed
1525-518: The history of Britain". This was in fact a time of major transition in the history of Britain, with the replacing of Roman traditions with Saxon rule and the conversion of the British to Christianity. There are again, as with Owen Glendower , parallels with contemporary history: "The Dark Ages and the 1930s are the periods of what Powys, in Yeatsian phrase calls 'appalling transition'." and there
1586-736: The landscape of Dorset and Somerset and the characters' deep personal relationships with it had been of importance in the great Wessex novels, so the landscape of Wales was now significant, especially that of the Corwen region. The landscape and the intimate relations that characters have with the elements, including the sky, wind, plants, animals, and insects, have great significance in all Powys's works. These are linked to another major influence: Romanticism , especially William Wordsworth and writers influenced by Wordsworth such as Walter Pater . Powys also admired Goethe and Rousseau . Words such as mysticism and pantheism are sometimes used in discussing Powys's attitude to nature, but what he
1647-546: The last time, to Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales. John Cowper Powys died in 1963 and Phyllis Playter in 1982. 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
1708-480: 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". Other important characters are "a striking collection of human oddities including a famous clown, his mad brother, a naive Latin teacher, a young philosopher, and an abortionist." Novelist Margaret Drabble comments, " Weymouth Sands
1769-477: The metastructures of the great novels". These works were frequently bestsellers, especially in the United States. The Meaning of Culture (1929) went through 20 editions in Powys's lifetime. In Defence of Sensuality , published at the end of the following year, was yet another bestseller, as was A Philosophy of Solitude (1933). Taking advantage of his reputation as an itinerant lecturer, Powys published in 1915
1830-529: The minor novel Morwyn or The Vengeance of God (1937). Another important element in Morwyn , is condemnation of animal cruelty, especially vivisection , a theme also found in Weymouth Sands (1934). As a result, some writers have seen Powys as a forebear of the modern animal rights movement. In 1944, Powys wrote an anti-vivisection article for Leo Rodenhurst's The Abolitionist , a paper published by
1891-419: The mode of science fiction, although science has no part in them". One of Powys's most important works, his Autobiography (1934), describes his first 60 years. While he sets out to be totally frank about himself, and especially his sexual peculiarities and perversions, he largely excludes any substantial discussion of the women in his life. The reason for this is now much clearer because we now know that it
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1952-564: The novel's main characters, the Welshman Owen Evans, introduces the idea that the Grail has a Welsh (Celtic), pagan, pre-Christian origin. The main sources for Powys's ideas on mythology and the Grail legend are Sir John Rhys 's Studies in the Arthurian Legend , R. S. Loomis 's Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance , and the works of Jessie Weston , including From Ritual to Romance . T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land
2013-492: The novels written after Porius as "the spontaneous fairy tales of a Rabelaisian surrealist enchanted with life", and finds Atlantis (1954) "the richest and most sustained" of them. Atlantis is set in the Homeric world. The protagonist is Nisos, the young son of Odysseus , who plans to voyage west from Ithaca over the drowned Atlantis . Powys final fiction, such as Up and Out (1957) and All or Nothing (1960) "use
2074-477: The philosopher and historian Will Durant . Powys was also a witness in the obscenity trial of James Joyce 's novel Ulysses , 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 . His first novel Wood and Stone , which Powys dedicated to Thomas Hardy , was published in 1915. This
2135-530: The posthumous After my Fashion (1980), which was written around 1920, and Ducdame (1925). Wolf Solent was the first of the so-called Wessex novels, which include A Glastonbury Romance (1932), Weymouth Sands (1934) and Maiden Castle (1936). Powys was an admirer of Thomas Hardy, and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset, parts of Hardy's mythical Wessex. The American scholar Richard Maxwell described these four novels "as remarkably successful with
2196-636: The protagonists of his novels who usually resemble him, the cultivation of a psycho-sensuous philosophy is as important as the Christian religion was for an earlier generation. More minor in scale, the novels that followed Porius are marked by elements of fantasy. The Inmates (1952) is set in a madhouse and explores Powys's interest in mental illness, but it is a work on which Powys failed to bestow sufficient "time and care". Glen Cavaliero, in John Cowper Powys: Novelist , describes
2257-703: The reading public of his time". Maiden Castle , the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester , Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge . Powys intended it to be a rival of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge . All the same, despite his indebtedness to the Victorian novel and his enthusiasm for Hardy, Walter Scott and such lesser figures as Ainsworth , Powys was clearly a modernist . He has affinities also with Fyodor Dostoevsky , Friedrich Nietzsche , Walter Pater , Marcel Proust , Carl Jung , Sigmund Freud , D. H. Lawrence , James Joyce and Dorothy Richardson . It
2318-648: The rebellion of the Welsh Prince Owain Glyndŵr (1400–1416 CE), while Porius takes place in the time of the mythic King Arthur (499 CE). However, Arthur is a minor character compared with the Welsh Prince Porius and the King's magician Myrddin ( Merlin ). In both works, but especially Porius , Powys makes use of the mythology found in the Welsh classic The Mabinogion . Porius is, for some,
2379-454: 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. Before Wolf Solent there had been four earlier apprentice novels: Wood and Stone (1915), Rodmoor (1916),
2440-418: The second half. As the old gods were departing then, so the old gods are departing now. And as the future was dark with the terrifying possibilities of human disaster then, so, today, are we confronted by the possibility of catastrophic world events. Powys also saw Glyndŵr's rebellion taking place at the time of "one of the most momentous and startling epochs of transition that the world has known". Just as
2501-489: The town with contempt. Philip's vision is of a future with more mines and more factories. John Crow, however, as he is penniless, takes on the task of organising a pageant for Geard. At the same time an alliance of Anarchists , Marxists , and Jacobins try to turn Glastonbury into a commune. While Welsh mythology was already important in A Glastonbury Romance and Maiden Castle it became still more so after he and Phyllis Playter moved to Corwen , Wales, in 1935, first in
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2562-460: 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. In the US he engaged in a public debate with the philosopher Bertrand Russell on marriage, and he also debated with
2623-479: Was a clear possibility of another "Saxon" invasion , when Powys began writing Porius in 1942. In prefatory comments probably written about 1949, as the Cold War began, Powys suggests: As we contemplate the historic background to [...] the last year of the fifth century [sic], it is impossible not to think of the background of human life from which we watch the first half of the twentieth century dissolve into
2684-470: Was a director of William Rider and Son the publisher of them. 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. 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"
2745-471: 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. This novel was reprinted several times in both the United States and Britain and translated into German in 1930 and French in 1931. In the Preface he wrote for
2806-552: Was a prolific writer of letters, many of which have been published, and kept a diary from 1929; several diaries, including this one, have been published. Among his correspondents were the novelists Theodore Dreiser , James Purdy , James Hanley , Henry Miller and Dorothy Richardson , but he also replied to the many ordinary admirers who wrote to him. Periodically, over almost 50 years, starting with Confessions of Two Brothers in 1916, Powys wrote works that present his personal philosophy of life. These are not works of philosophy in
2867-572: 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. 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
2928-502: Was an admirer of novelist and poet Thomas Hardy , and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset, part of Hardy's mythical Wessex . American scholar Richard Maxwell describes these four novels "as remarkably successful with the reading public of his time". The setting of this novel is the English seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset , and according to Samuel Levenson: “There are nineteen main characters, ... forty or more minor ones; ...
2989-586: 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 . 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
3050-524: Was both anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist : "Powys already regarded fascism and Stalinism as appalling, but different, totalitarian regimes". It was not until 1929, with the novel Wolf Solent , that Powys achieved any critical or financial success. In 1930 Powys and Phyllis moved from Greenwich Village in New York City to Hillsdale in rural upstate New York . 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
3111-565: 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
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#17327983639463172-411: Was forced to make substantial changes to the British edition of Weymouth Sands . The title of the English version was changed to Jobber Skald (1935) and all references to the real-life Weymouth were cut. The date of the action was also changed from "The present" to "190-". Here, amongst other things "Powys tells the story of Jobber Skald - a large, somewhat brutish man, obsessed with the urge to kill
3233-499: Was generally well received by reviewers. Morine Krissdottir in her recent biography describes the essays in Suspended Judgements as "fine criticism". As for The Pleasures of Literature , the writer Kenneth Hopkins states that "[i]f ever there was a book of criticism for the general reader, this is it." In the 1940s Powys wrote books on two of his favourite authors: Dostoievsky (1946) and Rabelais (1948). The latter
3294-513: 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. 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. In May 1955 they moved, for
3355-593: Was led by the Rev. Charles Francis Powys who had a number of literary children. Rev. Charles Francis Powys was the great nephew of Thomas Powys , created the first Lord Lilford in 1797, and the Powys' were also cousins of the Shirley family who held the living of the parish of Shirley in Derbyshire and were direct descendants of Earl Ferrers, the first Sheriff of the County. This Derbyshire location article
3416-601: Was particularly praised by some reviewers. The Rabelais scholar Donald M. Frame, for example, in the Romantic Review , December 1951, describes Powys's translation (only of one fourth of Rabelais) "the best we have in English". A French translation of Rabelais , by Catherine Lieutenant, was published in 1990. Powys is a controversial writer, "who evokes both massive contempt and near idolatry." While Walter Allen in Tradition and Dream recognises Powys's genius, he
3477-797: Was published in January 1963, shortly before Powys's death that June. 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 . Belinda Humfrey, suggests that "[p]erhaps Powys's best poems are those given to Jason Otter in Wolf Solent and Taliessin in Porius ." The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973) edited by English poet Philip Larkin contains "In A Hotel Writing-Room" by Powys. While he
3538-701: Was the pebbled seashore opposite Brunswick Terrace". C.A. Coates in her book on Powys notes the importance of Weymouth for his imagination, quoting from Autobiography : "every aspect of the Weymouth Coast sank into my mind with such a transubstantiating magic" that "it is through the medium of these things that I envisage all the experiences of my life". When he died in 1963 Powys's ashes were scattered on nearby Chesil Beach . Powys notes in his Diary on Valentine's Day 1932 that "I'm really going to begin my Weymouth Book" and he also records that he had been given " Hardy 's Well-Beloved by his lover Phyllis Playter,
3599-540: Was unsatisfactory, and Powys eventually lived a large part of each year in the USA, and had relationships with various women. 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 . Another friend and an important supporter in America was the novelist Theodore Dreiser . In 1921 he met Phyllis Playter,
3660-560: Was vicar for thirty-two years. 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. 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
3721-484: Was written while he was still married to Margaret, though he was living in a permanent relationship with Phyllis Playter. It is one of his most important works and writer J. B. Priestley suggests that, even if Powys had not written a single novel, "this one book alone would have proved him to be a writer of genius." And it "has justly been compared to the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau . John Cowper Powys
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