THE BLACKTHORN WINTER by Philippa Powys

With an Introduction by Glen Cavaliero

including a previously unpublished

colour portrait of the author

A hardback book in dustjacket of

208 pages in a limited edition.

Price £ 19.50

ISBN-10: 0955152305 

ISBN-13: 9780955152320

Dimensions: 210x140mm

Published: 31 January 2007

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In The Blackthorn Winter a band of gipsy travellers in the West Country catch the eye of a restless, young woman, Nancy Mead, in particular the seductive Mike. Leaving behind her dull blacksmith lover, Walter Westmacott, she elopes with him for a life of adventure on the road. Soon enough the powers of desire and passion set off bitter conflicts that bring remorse, revenge and death in their wake.

The Blackthorn Winter is an ardent and uncompromising portrayal of life in rural England in the 1920s, and of one woman’s battle with her own emotions.

‘A sense of immediacy informs The Blackthorn Winter … The prose swerves from the abrupt to the naive; it is full of inversions, as though the author were quite unaware of the kind of language employed by her literary contemporaries. But she is not writing for a conventional novel-reading public … The book is alive with textures and smells; it is not written about country life but out of direct experience of it, the kind of life a rural readership would recognise.’ – From the Introduction by Glen Cavaliero

REVIEWS: ‘There is a distinctive energy and wildness to this work; its scenes of the harsh and peripatetic Gypsy life of the period are compelling and memorable.’ – The Times Literary Supplement (March 2007)

‘The charm of the book lies in its atmosphere – a heavy, slow, earthy atmosphere – and in the power of the author to conjure up country sounds and scents and scenes to such an extent that we almost cease to be readers and become participants in the story.’ - Spectator

'If the first pages of The Blackthorn Winter seem unremarkable enough, the Introduction will have given a foretaste of how unusual and original a book it is. Not a difficult story to read, it is an easy story to misread. Like her brother, John Cowper, Philippa Powys has a great sense of drama. Her plot is dramatically simple, her dialogue spare, and the visual beauty of The Blackthorn Winter has a cinematic quality. How interesting to imagine its author making a film!'  -  Cicely Hill from The Powys Society Newsletter, July 2007  

^{To read an extract from The Blackthorn Winter Click Here}

^{To download an A4 TBW flyer in PDF format Click Here}  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Catharine Edith Philippa Powys (1886-1963) was born at Montacute in Somerset, the ninth of eleven children in a multi-talented family. She had no formal education and much of the knowledge she acquired in youth was self-discovered. Her early adult life was spent farming, but in a family of prodigious writers – notably John Cowper Powys, T. F. Powys and Llewelyn Powys – it was no surprise that her own creative energies were channelled into literature from an early age.

To read more on Philippa Powys, please click on the links below

Philippa Powys          TBW Reviews          Poems

Respected scholar Dr Glen Cavaliero, Fellow Commoner of St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, is a noted poet and critic. Among his books are The Supernatural and English Fiction (1995) and The Alchemy of Laughter (2000). His most recent collection of poems is The Justice of the Night (2007)

THE BLACKTHORNWINTER

Philippa Powys

Hardback £19.50

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June 2008