Llewelyn Powys (1884 – 1939) was born in Dorchester, Dorset. A year later the family moved to the village of Montacute in Somerset where his father, the Rev. Charles Francis Powys, became rector and remained so for thirty three years. Powys was educated at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and then spent several years in Switzerland, Africa and the USA where he eventually established his career as a writer. While living in New York he met and married the novelist, Alyse Gregory, who was managing editor of the prestigious Dial magazine. In 1925 the couple moved to Dorset: firstly to the Coastguard Cottages on White Nore and then a short distance to Chydyok; an isolated farmhouse where his two sisters, the poet and novelist, Philippa Powys, and the artist, Gertrude Powys, occupied the adjacent cottage. A couple of miles to the south lay the valley village of East Chaldon where his brother, Theodore Powys, the author of novels, stories and fables, lived as well as the writers Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett, the poets Valentine Ackland and Gamel Woolsey, and the sculptors Elizabeth Muntz and Stephen Tomlin, at varying times. As his health steadily deteriorated Llewelyn moved to Switzerland in 1936 where he continued to write essays and completed an imaginary autpbiography Love and Death.