Twenty-six Essays

A paperback of

176 pages

Price £ 9.99

ISBN-13: 9780955152375

Dimensions: 210x140mm

Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939) spent much of his adult life in exile from his native Wessex, residing at various times – for reasons of work or health – in Africa, America and Switzerland, as well as travelling in Europe, Palestine and the West Indies. These often enforced absences served to intensify his love of the landscape and lore of Somerset and Dorset, where he had grown up during the latter years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and brought to the numerous essays he later wrote about the Wessex region a powerful sense of identification and nostalgia, an almost tangible longing to recapture the happy days of his childhood and to rediscover the people and places of his home country.

In Durdle Door to Dartmoor The Sundial Press brought together twenty-six of Powys’s finest Wessex essays, and now gathers twenty-six more for this new companion volume, Still Blue Beauty. Like those in the earlier collection, they are richly evocative of West Country places and landscape, but have a greater focus on people of the region, or those who were famously associated with it – from historical characters such as King Alfred or the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth, to later contemporaries such as Thomas Hardy and Powys’s own Dorchester neighbours and remembered friends of his Montacute childhood. Members of Powys’s remarkable family feature too – his father, the Rev. Charles Powys, Vicar of Montacute for thirty-three years; his novelist brothers John Cowper Powys and T. F. Powys; his artist sister Gertrude; Littleton Powys, who became headmaster of Sherborne Prep; and his younger brother William, with whom he spent four years farming in Africa.

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

"These two books, Durdle Door to Dartmoor (2007) and Still Blue Beauty (2008), are handy in size, in softback format and attractively priced. They come with very useful short introductions and wonderful covers, depicting paintings by Nicholas Hely Hutchinson. The design of the cover of the second collection, Still Blue Beauty, is, in my view, most beautiful." (From a review in the Powys Society Newsletter, July 2008)

This is a companion book to ‘Durdle Door to Dartmoor’, also published by The Sundial Press. It contains more short essays on the West Country countryside and its famous people, with a large dose of personal family reminiscences. This little volume helps one appreciate the natural and cultural riches of this part of England, as well as being a useful insight into the talented Powys family.

"I decided to use the two books as a travel guide and in the month of July took a brief driving holiday to the area. Having the essays to hand, so well written and quick to read, enhanced my enjoyment of places such as Cerne Abbas, Weymouth, Portland, East Chaldon, Studland and Corfe Castle. However these essays are not a tourist brochure – Powys is keen to dig into his personal memories and bring in historical and literary anecdotes, even if they wander off the ostensible subject sometimes. This gives a strong feeling of being in the company of a colourful individual, and one who loves life." - John Vernon (founder of Renaissance Training www.rtraining.co.uk)

To read A Pond one of Llewelyn Powys's finest essays please click on the following link A Pond which will open in a new window.

To read one of the previously uncollected essays from this new selection please click on the following link The World Is New! which will open in a new window.

STILL BLUE BEAUTY

Wessex Essays of

Llewelyn Powys

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