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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

John Cowper Powys

  

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John Cowper Powys : Autobiography

Tuesday 2 October 1934: 'Books read or in reading [over summer 1934]: Sh[akespea]re. Troilus. Pericles. Taming of Shrew. Cymbeline. Maupassant. de Vigny. only scraps [the four French authors grouped by bracket in MS] St Simon. Gide. Library books: Powys Wells Lady Brooke. Prose. Dobree. Alice James.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

John Cowper Powys : [unknown]

'Sydney shaped Larkin's taste skilfully, leading him away from J.C. Powys and towards Llewelyn and T.F., towards James Joyce with no expectation that he would enjoy him, and towards poets who would remain favourites all his life: Hardy, Christina Rossetti and A.E. Housman. In late 1939, when Larkin discovered T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Edward Upward and Christopher Isherwood, Sydney also encouraged him - continuing, as he had always done, to make reading seem an independent activity, only tenuously linked to schoolwork.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Larkin      Print: Book

  

John Cowper Powys : Wolf Solent

'Have been trying to read Solent Wolf [sic] again -- duck-weed and spittle unrelieved [...] No wonder that those Hardyesque fungi, the Powys [brothers T. F. and John Cowper], have never got anywhere. Patiently advertising their own decay and searching the hedgerows for simples. Can't go to bed with anyone, only talk and think it over, don't know that lust and tenderness bring relief.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

John Cowper Powys : Wolf Solent

Thank you for your appreciative letter. I am glad to have it. I did not say that 'A High Wind' would be the best book of the autumn. As for Powys, he is a friend of mine, but I could not get on with his book, and so I have said nothing about it. I think that you have touched its weak spot in saying that it is too abnormal.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

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