John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys (Shirley, Derbyshire, 1872 - Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales, 1963) was a British novelist, poet and philosopher, an unusual figure in English literature of the early twentieth century. The son of an Anglican clergyman, he spent much of his life as an itinerant lecturer in the United States, where he lived from 1905 to 1934 and befriended the novelist Theodore Dreiser.

He did not find success until 1929 with Wolf Solent, the first of his so-called Wessex novels, set in southern England and indebted to the sensibility of Thomas Hardy. A Glastonbury Romance and other books followed, marked by vivid sensory detail and large casts of characters. After settling in Wales in 1935, he turned to Welsh myth, language and history, which produced Owen Glendower and Porius. His philosophical essays, such as In Defense of Sensuality and A Philosophy of Solitude, argue for a life attentive to the senses and to inner solitude, and share an animistic vision in which nature and everyday objects have a kind of soul. His influence endures mainly among readers looking for an alternative to conventional realist fiction.