DURDLE DOOR TO DARTMOOR
Twenty-six of Llewelyn Powys's
finest Wessex Essays
A paperback of 160 pages
Price £ 9.99
ISBN-10: 0955152348 ISBN-13: 9780955152344
Publication date: 30 November 2007
"The arrangement of the essays suggests a sort of tour of Wessex, covering as they do a wide range of places and topics, from Corfe Castle to Lyme Regis, from Cerne Abbas to Studland. But this is no mere tourist handbook, rather an ideal companion to one. Powys was a wonderfully observant writer, whether contemplating the delicate imprints of deer hooves in the parklands of Sherborne or aerial battles between ravens and falcons, or recalling the “pantaloon trousers” of his grandfather at Stalbridge Rectory carrying primroses for his wife or the “round shining belly” of a kitchen kettle that Thomas Hardy said was his earliest memory."
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How To OrderThe essays fall into four basic groupings. First, South & South-West Dorset, starting with Durdle Door and two or three places in the vicinity to the west, and then swinging east around the Purbecks and back to the coast at Lulworth.
The Durdle Door - The White Nose - A Bronze Age Valley - Bats Head -The Fossil Forest - The Castle Park of East Lulworth - St Aldhelm’s Head - Studland - Corfe Castle - Herring Gulls
Then a second group from North Dorset working down South to Weymouth:
Stalbridge Rectory - The River Yeo - Cerne Abbas - Stinsford Churchyard - The Grave of William Barnes - Weymouth Harbour
Then to Lyme Regis in West Dorset from Portland:
Portland - A Famous Wreck - Hardy’s Monument - The Swannery Bell at Abbotsbury - Lyme Regis
And finally up to Somerset and across to North Devon, and then to the South:
Montacute House - Ham Hill - On the Other Side of the Quantocks - Exmoor - Dartmoor
‘The arrangement of the essays suggests a sort of tour of Wessex, covering as they do a wide range of places and topics, from Corfe Castle to Lyme Regis, from Cerne Abbas to Studland. But this is no mere tourist handbook, rather an ideal companion to one. Powys was a wonderfully observant writer, whether contemplating the delicate imprints of deer hooves in the parklands of Sherborne or aerial battles between ravens and falcons, or recalling the “pantaloon trousers” of his grandfather at Stalbridge Rectory carrying primroses for his wife or the “round shining belly” of a kitchen kettle that Thomas Hardy said was his earliest memory.’
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Llewelyn Powys is one of the rare writers who teach endurance of life as well as its enjoyment. Philip Larkin
For those with wit to heed his calls to observe and consider, the rewards of reading Powys are apparent … He is a writer of often exquisite perception. The Times Literary Supplement
It is Llewelyn Powys’s distinction of attitude, style and personality that makes his writing remarkable. Peter J. Foss (bibliographer)
When Llewelyn Powys puts pen to paper, something miraculous happens with words. The New York Herald Tribune
Civilisation needs men like Llewelyn Powys, such men who combine the austerity of a saint with the zest of a pagan. Ethel Mannin
'Consider the glow, the glory of being alive, the incredible chance of it! How heart-piercing, how shocking, how supremely beautiful is this unexplained, wavering movement that troubles all that is, from the Milky Way to a common sting-nettle!'
Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939) was born in the ancient town of Dorchester in Dorset. In the following year the family moved to the village of Montacute in Somerset where his father, the Rev. Charles Francis Powys, became vicar 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 writer Alyse Gregory, who was managing editor of the prestigious Dial magazine. In 1925 the couple moved to Dorset; firstly to the Coastguard Cottages on the White Nore and then a short distance inland 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 and where the writers Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett, the poets Valentine Ackland and Gamel Woolsey, and the sculptors Elizabeth Muntz and Stephen Tomlin also resided at varying times – a veritable artistic colony.
With a tally of twenty-eight books, Llewelyn Powys might best be described as a ‘miscellaneous writer’: the author of a novel, a biography, travel books, works of popular philosophy, autobiographical memoirs, and what he described as ‘an imaginary autobiography’, but it is arguably in the form of the essay that he most excelled.
Between the years 1934 and 1939 he published six collections of essays - Earth Memories, Damnable Opinions, Dorset Essays, The Twelve Months, Somerset Essays, and Rats in the Sacristy – and a sufficient number of others to fill three further, posthumously published volumes: A Baker’s Dozen, Swiss Essays and Wessex Memories. This present collection, DURDLE DOOR TO DARTMOOR, draws from Dorset Essays, Earth Memories, Somerset Essays, A Baker’s Dozen and Wessex Memories to provide a selection of his best essays, all of which exemplify the particular qualities that make Powys a master of this often overlooked but deeply rewarding genre.
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