POWYS, John Cowper

(1872-1963)

   UK writer, resident for much of his career in the USA, though he returned to the UK in his later years. The novels of his old age, from Morwyn, or The Vengeance of God (1937) onwards, combine fantasy and sfelements in an attempt, sometimes obscure, to heat his eccentric mysticism into a unique amalgam: Porius (1951) is an Arthurian fantasy; The Inmates (1952) presents the "delusions" of a cast of mental patients inexaggerated terms and features a giant helicopter; Atlantis (1954) describes Odysseus's search for ATLANTIS; The Brazen Head (1956) deals with Roger Bacon (c1214-1292) as alchemist. Between 1957 and 1960, near the end of his life, JCP produced a sequence of remarkable FABULATIONS, some of them unhinged. They were all eventually published as Up and Out (coll 1957), the first novella of which is a post- HOLOCAUST tale in whichfour survivors witness the end of time, All or Nothing (1960), in which two children make a kind of tour of the Universe, Real Wraiths (1974 chap), Two and Two (1974 chap) and Three Fantasies (coll 1985).Of JCP's two brothers, both also writers, T(heodore) F(rancis) Powys (1875-1953) wrote much of strong fantasy interest.

   JC

   Other works: The Owl, the Duck, and - Miss Rowe! Miss Rowe! (1930 chap US); A Glastonbury Romance (1932 US); Maiden Castle (1936 US); Owen Glendower (1940 US); Lucifer: ANarrative Poem (1956); Homer and the Aether (1959).

   See also: END OF THE WORLD; FANTASTIC VOYAGES.