Descents of Memory: A Life of John Cowper Powys

Descents of Memory: A Life of John Cowper Powys by Krissdottir, Morine. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781585679171.

John Cowper Powyss works have been described as "the only novels produced by an English writer than can fairly be compared to the fictions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky ... with an immensity to which only Blake could provide a parallel in English literature" (George Steiner, The New Yorker). His talents, as manifested by such books as his Autobiography, Wolf Solent, Weymouth Sands, and A Glastonbury Romance, have been compared to Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, Proust, and Poe. In this, Powyss first comprehensive biography, eminent scholar Morine Krisdóttir delves into the life of the writer, from his childhood in Derbyshire through his education and his celebrated lecture tours through England and the United States; from his lifes loves to his relationship with his own writing. Krisdóttir demonstrates that Powys--known as much for his essays, letters, poetry, and philosophy as he was his fiction--was a man whose writing had a scope matched only by the breadth of his life. Using primary sources, never-before-seen archival materials (including photos), and Powyss own writings, Krisdóttir pieces together this life in such a way that this writer--this astonishing talent--will be impossible to forget.