LLEWELYN POWYS
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.
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
DURDLE DOOR TO DARTMOOR
Wessex Essays of Llewelyn
Powys
ISBN-13:
9780955152344
in paperback at
£9.99
CONTENTS: 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 - Stalbridge Rectory - The River Yeo - Cerne Abbas -
Stinsford
Churchyard - The Grave of William Barnes - Weymouth Harbour -
Portland - A Famous Wreck - Hardy’s Monument -
The Swannery Bell at
Abbotsbury - Lyme Regis - Montacute House - Ham Hill - On the Other
Side of the
Quantocks - Exmoor -
Dartmoor
To listen to
a reading of STINSFORD CHURCHYARD please scroll down to the bottom of
the page.
STILL
BLUE BEAUTY
Wessex Essays of Llewelyn
Powys
ISBN-13:
9780955152375
in
paperback at £9.99
(includes
four previously uncollected essays)
CONTENTS:
The Sea! The
Sea! The Sea! - Lodmoor - The Memory of One Day - A Stonehenge in
Miniature -
The Father of Dorset - A Pond - High Chaldon - A Royal Rebel - Somerset
Names -
Montacute Hill - The Village Shop - The Wordsworths in Dorset - The
World Is
New! - A Visit by Moonlight - Shaftesbury: Champion of the Poor - A
Wish for
Freedom - Athelney: In the Steps of King Alfred - Wookey Hole - Green
Corners
of Dorset - Recollections of Thomas Hardy - A Foolish Razorbill - A
Richer
Treasure - Weymouth Memories - The Shambles Fog-Horn - Dorchester Lives
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First REVIEW
Christmas Lore & Legend: Yuletide
Essays by
Llewelyn Powys
with a foreword by Anthony Head
Sundial Press 2010. p/back, 96pp., £6.99
ISBN
978 0955 152399
Christmas Lore & Legend is a collection of fourteen previously
uncollected
`Yuletide Essays’ by Llewelyn Powys, although five of them have
previously been
published in books which include `A Baker’s Dozen (2)’;
`Dorset
Essays’(2); `The Twelve Months’ and
Kenneth Hopkins’ `Llewelyn
Powys – A Selection from His Writings’ The remaining nine
essays were
previously published in newspapers and magazines during the 1930s, with
about
half of them being written in Switzerland during the final three years
of
Llewelyn’s life, and they are collected here in book form for the first
time.
This is the third book of `collected essays’
from the
Sundial Press by this author, following `Durdle Door to Dartmoor’ and
its
companion volume, `Still Blue Beauty’, and the publishers are to be
congratulated, for as all devotees of Llewelyn Powys know, apart from
`Wessex
Memories’ (2002) and Cecil Woolf’s `Powys Heritage Series’ of diary
publications selected & edited by the excellent Peter Foss, in
recent years
any previously unpublished Llewelyn Powys material has been – and
remains - as
rare as frog's feathers!
Of course it is regrettable and little
disappointing
to those who collect his work that any new title with Llewelyn Powys
named as
author should contain any previously published
material at all, yet
considering that it’s seventy one years since his death, it’s almost
inevitable
that this should be the case as the volume of his work -- especially
that which
constitutes publishable material -- becomes exhausted. Perhaps then, we
should
be thankful for small mercies and welcome this latest publication into
the
canon of his books, remembering that it could also be an introduction
to the
author for someone who is only initially interested in the lore and
legend of
Christmas! For even if the author’s name meant nothing, the startlingly
attractive cover alone would most certainly catch the interest and
attention of
such a person, for it bears all the festive hallmarks of the 1930’s
period
Christmas with the ubiquitous Robin and sprigs of holly against a merry
red
background, and looks for all the world like the fattest Christmas card
you
ever saw. Dare I hint that it would make an ideal Christmas gift?
The book benefits from an intuitively written
and
extremely perceptive foreword by Anthony Head, whose brilliant
summation of
this collection of essays can neither be gainsaid nor surpassed when he
writes:
Rich in imagery and anecdote, woven through
with local lore and personal
reminiscence, these Yuletide essays bring vividly alive the customs and
character, the sounds and tastes of earlier generations and are
informed by the
lively curiosity and deep nostalgia that typify Powys’ best work.
`Rich in imagery and anecdote’ is true of all
his
work, but oft repeated anecdote constitutes a blemish on an otherwise
flawless
page, and there are blemishes here which include the repetition of both
anecdote and phrase in several of the essays. Of content and style they
represent a mixed bag, with the author’s virtues and faults paraded
together; well-balanced
lyrical sentences marred by the use of an obscure word or phrase, one
or two
mixed metaphors, the striving for effect with an over-indulgence in
exclamation
marks…!
Equally, those who are familiar with Llewelyn’s
best
work will recognize instances where his normally unique style becomes
affected
– doubtless influenced by writing for a specific readership, but
nevertheless
disconcerting; and given his avowed and much vaunted pagan rationalism,
some of
these `affectations’ are incommiscible. And whilst some may feel that
two or
three of the essays lack the quality of construction and crystal clear
coherence normally associated with Llewelyn, others may be bemused by
comments
which would seem to indicate the author’s tacit acceptance of some of
the
tenets of Christianity.
Criticism apart, some of Llewelyn’s finest work
is
also represented here, perhaps nowhere more so than in the very first
essay,
`The First Fall of Snow’ when, reminiscing about his time in Africa, he
writes:
I have felt the earth, our ancient Mother Earth
beneath my feet, tremble
and quiver in an ecstasy of childbirth under the sweet persuasion of
those
torrential down-pourings; but never once did she attain to such
mysterious
power as when, at rest under a covering of snow, she lies with the
appearance
and potency of a sepultured goddess who is in truth dead and yet
retains that
upon her ivory forehead which is equivalent to immortality.
Devouring the book at a single sitting (as I
did)
tends to highlight the `blemishes’ and makes its faults more apparent,
and in
accord with the publisher I would agree that it’s `rather like
a box of
chocolates that shouldn’t be eaten at one go but dipped into and
savoured one
by one’. Although for the devotees of Llewelyn Powys
`Christmas Lore &
Legend’ will be a welcome addition to the literary canon of this most
controversial of the published Powys Brothers.
Neil Lee Atkin (November 2010)
Llewelyn Powys and Christmas shopping in
Dorchester Jo Draper takes a
walk through yesteryear's Dorchester as seen through the enthusiastic eyes of
Llewelyn Powys and traders' adverts through the ages
Llewelyn Powys loved Dorchester, and even
thought it best in winter, rejoicing: ‘Oh! how happy I have been shopping in
this town on the Saturday before Christmas. The thronging crowds afford a
liberal education as to the inner being of the county – the eighteenth-century
country faces of the farmers, homely and hearty, as they stand in the crowds
outside the Antelope, … the face of a farm labourer almost religious in its
refinement, glimpsed for a moment as the man passes along the pavement with a
sprig of holly in his cap.
‘To be abroad in Dorchester on a Christmas
Eve is an experience never to be forgotten,’ he waxed happily, continuing, ‘by
half-past three, with the first snow of the year fluttering down, the shops are
brightly lighted. The streets offer many a lively scene – the country woman,
over-burdened with parcels and with young-eyed children one, two, and three all
clinging to the folds of her round skirt; the town girl light of step with a
present for true love; the aged upstairs lodger, glad to have been about in the
taverns Christmassing; the genial fishwife, my own friend, at her place, with
two heaps piled up on her wide wooden tray, the one of silver, the other of
gold – for see how her fat fresh herrings shine silver bright, her oranges from
Spain like a pyramid of brass!’
From Dorset Life magazine (to read the full article,
please click here)
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