Who was John Cowper Powys?

 John Cowper Powys (1872-1962)
 

 John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) poet, novelist, lecturer and philosopher formulated his ‘life-philosophy’ as a guide for living in his own life and it was the reason d’etre for all of his writing.  He said; “My writings – novels and all – are simply so much propaganda, as effective as I can make it, for my philosophy of life.”

Convinced he had discovered something most human beings are desperately seeking - the secret of happiness - he wanted to share it with ordinary people for whom he had great sympathy. Powys lived in America at the time it was becoming the first major industrial and consumer society and he saw the negative effects of modern life on the average person and it made him angry.

From his observations of the world, he concluded that the causes of the unhappiness, boredom  and sense of futility that pervades modern life lie in the nature of society and in our human nature. We look for happiness in the wrong places; in wealth and material possessions and in other people. Powys  shows us an alternative way of living based on non-materialism, solitude, spirituality, compassion and contact with nature.  He believed that nature is not something to be dominated and exploited and that humans are not separate from, but very much interconnected with, the rest of the universe.  He abhorred animal cruelty and social injustice and stressed that compassion and kindness should be paramount in our lives.  We can have the life we want while still having kind regard for others.

Between the 1920’s and 1950’s, he wrote a series of philosophical books in which he formulated and refined his ideas for achieving a happier and more meaningful life.  He based his ideas and strategies for living on his reading of the great philosophers and classic writers and poets.  He used his novels as vehicles through which he could show the reader how his ideas on living could be implemented in daily life.

He has a great deal of value to say to us today and not only assists us in understanding our problems but outlines an alternative way of living that can lead to a happier and more fulfilled life for the individual and a better world for all.

John Cowper Powys was born on October 8, 1872, in Shirley, Derbyshire, the eldest of eleven children, He and two of his brothers (Llewellyn and Theodore) became novelists, another sibling became a poet, and four others published books on subjects ranging from lace-making to architecture. Powys was a prolific writer and his work consists of poetry, books on philosophy and literature and an autobiography, but he is best known for his novels, which have been compared to the works of Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Walter Scott, Marcel Proust and James Joyce.  Among those who admired his work were Henry Miller, Angus Wilson, George Steiner, Iris Murdoch and J. B. Priestley.

Powys was educated at Sherborne School and went on to read history at Cambridge. He first visited the United Sates in 1904 to give lecture tours and moved there permanently in 1909 when his marriage ended. He spent the next thirty years traveling across America giving lectures at universities, colleges and informal groups on classic writers such as Dickens, Dostoievsky and Henry James and on his philosophy for life. A powerful orator and enigmatic interpreter of literature and philosophy, he became one of the most popular speakers in America drawing huge crowds. In addition to ordinary men and women, his audiences included Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Charlie Chaplin, Emma Goldman, Paul Robeson and Isadora Duncan, many of whom became his friends.  His lecturing career set his reputation and he became better known in America than in the UK.  In 1929, Powys gave up public speaking due to poor health and became a full-time writer aged fifty-seven (he had published his first two novels during the First World War).  Although he said he loved America, Powys longed for Wales (for which he always had an affinity) and in 1934, he returned to the UK with his partner Phyllis Playter, living briefly in Dorchester before settling at Corwen, North Wales and then in 1955, in Blaenau-Festiniog where he lived until his death at the age of 91, on June 17 1963.

Among the most successful of Powys’s  novels are Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932), Weymouth Sands (1934), Maiden Castle (1936), Owen Glendower (1940) and Porius (1951). Powys also produced poetry and works of literary appreciation including Visions & Revisions (1915), Suspended Judgments (1916), One Hundred Best Books (1916), The Pleasures of Literature (1938) (published as Enjoyment of Literature in the United States), Dostoievsky (1946), and Rabelais (1948).  Of his philosophical books, The Meaning of Culture (1929), In Defence of Sensuality (1930), A Philosophy of Solitude (1933) and The Art of Happiness (1935) are considered among his best.  

Powys’s books have not always been easily available as many were not in print but thankfully this situation is being remedied with the recent re-publication of many of his works.