Theodore Francis Powys was a British novelist and short story writer, born in Shirley, Derbyshire on the 20 December, 1875, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys (1843-1923), vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper

William Cowper

William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

. He came from a family of eleven talented children. This includes the novelist John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys

-Biography:Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys , who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also...

 (1872 -1963) and novelist and essayist Llewelyn Powys

Llewelyn Powys

Llewelyn Powys was a British writer and younger brother of John Cowper Powys and T. F. Powys.-Life:Powys was born in Dorchester, the son of a clergyman, and was educated at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. While lecturing in the United States he contracted tuberculosis...

 (1884-1939). His sister Phillipa also published a novel and some poetry, while Marian Powys was an authority on lace and lace-making and published a book on this subject. Gertrude Powys was a painter. Theodore Powys's brother A. R. Powys, was Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and published a number of books on architectural subjects.
A sensitive child Theodore Powys was not happy in school and left when he was 15 to apprentice on a farm in Suffolk. Later he had his own farm in Suffolk, but he was not successful and returned to Dorset in 1901 with plans to be a writer. Then in 1905 he married Violet Dodd. They had two sons and later adopted a daughter. From 1904 until 1940 Theodore Powys lived in East Chaldon, but then moved to Mappowder

Mappowder

Mappowder is a village in north Dorset, England, situated in the Blackmore Vale nine miles south east of Sherborne. The village has a population of 137 . The name of the village comes from mapuldor, Old English for 'maple tree'...

 because of the war.

Theodore was deeply, if
unconventionally, religious and was the author of several novels and many short stories. Amongst which the novels Mr Weston’s Good Wine (1927), Unclay, and the short story collection Fables are most praised, while his early non-fiction work The Soliloquy of a Hermit 1916 also has its admirers. The Bible was a major influence on Theodore Powys and he had especially affinity with writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, including John Bunyan

John Bunyan

John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...

, Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing...

, Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

, Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 and George Crabbe

George Crabbe

George Crabbe was an English poet and naturalist.-Biography:He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768, he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge...

. Amongst modern writers, he admired Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

, Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 and Friederich Nietzsche.
He died on the 27 November, 1953, in Mappowder, Dorset, where he was buried.

Non-fiction

• An Interpretation of Genesis. N.p.: Privately printed,1907.
• Soliloquy of a Hermit. New York: G. Arnlod Shaw, 1916 (Soliloquies of a Hermit 1918).

Novels

• Black Bryony. London: Chatto and Windus, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1923.
• Mark Only. London: Chatto and Windus, 1924; New York: Knopf, 1924.
• Mr Tasker's Gods. London: Chatto and Windus, 1925; New York: Knopf, 1925.
• Mockery Gap. London: Chatto and Windus, 1925; New York: Knopf, 1925.
• Mr Weston's Good Wine. London: Chatto and Windus, 1927; New York: Viking, 1927.
• Kindness in a Corner. London : Chatto and Windus, 1930; New York: Viking, 1930.
• Unclay. London: Chatto and Windus, 1931; New York: Viking, 1932.
• The Market Bell, edited with notes by Ian Robinson, assisted by Elaine Mencher; with an afterword by J. Lawrence Mitchell. Doncaster, South Yorkshire : Brynmill Press, 1991.

Short Story Collections

(including novellas)

• The Left Leg. London: Chatto and Windus, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1923.
• Innocent Birds. London: Chatto and Windus, 1926; New York: Knopf, 1926.
• The House With the Echo: twenty-six stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1928; New York: Viking, 1928.
• Fables. New York: Viking,1929; London: Chatto and Windus, 1929 (No Painted Plumage, 1934).
• The White Paternoster, and Other Stories. London, Chatto & Windus, 1930; New York: Viking,1931.
• The Two Thieves (Containing: In "Good Earth", "God", "The Two Thieves"). London: Chatto and Windus, 1932; New York: Viking, 1933.
• Captain Patch: Twenty-one Stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1935.
• Bottle's Path, and Other Stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1946.
• God's Eyes A-Twinkle (an anthology of the stories of T. F. Powys, with a preface by Charles Prentice). London, Chatto & Windus, 1947.
• Rosie Plum, and Other Stories, ed. F. Powys. London, Chatto & Windus, 1966.
• Come Dine, and Tadnol, ed. A. P. Riley. Hastings: R.A. Brimmell, 1967
• Father Adam. Doncaster: Brynmill, 1990.
• Mock's curse: Nineteen Stories, selected and edited by Elaine & Barrie Mencher. Norfolk: Brynmill, 1995.
• The Sixpenny Strumpet (with Tales from "The Two Thieves") Harleston: Brynmill, 1997.
• Selected Early Works of T.F. Powys. Brynmill Press, 2003.

In addition some single stories were also published as books during the 1920s & 1930s

Books About

• Buning, Marius. T.F. Powys: A Modern Allegorist. Rodopi: Amsterdam, 1986.
• Churchill, Reginald Charles. The Powys Brothers. London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League by Longmans, Green, 1962.
• Coombes, H. T.F. Powys. London : Barrie and Rockliff, [1960].
• Hunter, William. The Novels and Stories of T.F. Powys. Beckenham, Kent: Trigon Press, 1977.
• Graves, R. P. The Brothers Powys. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. ·
• Hopkins, Kenneth. The Powys Brothers. (1967).
• Humfrey, Belinda. Recollections of the Powys Brothers: Llewelyn, Theodore and John Cowper. London: Peter Owen, 1980.
• Marlow, Louis (Louis Umfreville Wilkinson). Welsh Ambassadors: Powys Lives and Letters. (1936) London: Rota, 1971. ·
• --::-- Seven Friends. London: The Richards Press, 1953. ·
• Mitchell, Lawrence J. T. F. Powys : Aspects of a Life. Bishopstone, Hertfordshire: Brynmill Press Ltd, 2005.
• --::-- T.F. Powys, 1875-1953 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Libraries, 1982.
• Powys, John Cowper. Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1934; London: John Lane, 1934.
• Riley, P. A Bibliography of T. F. Powys. Hastings: R. A. Brimmell, 1967.
• Sewell, Brocard. Theodore: Essays on T.F. Powys. [Aylesford, Eng.] : Saint Albert's Press, 1964.
• Scutt, Theodora Gay. Cuckoo in the Powys Nest (2000).
• Ward, Richard Heron. The Powys Brothers. London: John Lane, 1935.

Theses

• Steinmann, Martin. T.F. Powys: A Thematic Study. Univ. of Minnesota., 1954. Ph.D Thesis
• Goldring, Frances J. T.F. Powys As an Allegorical Novelist. Dalhousie University, Dept. of English, 1969. M.A. Thesis.
• Hoffman, David Edwin. A Comparative Study of J. C. Powys, T. F. Powys and Llewelyn Powys, with special reference to the influence of their private religions in their literary work. King's College, London, Department of English, 1958. M.A. Thesis.

Articles & Discussion

• Rogers, John Headley. British Short-Fiction Writers, 1915-1945. British short-fiction writers, 1915-1945 [electronic resource] / John Headley Rogers, editor. Publication info: Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research, 1996.
• Allen, Walter Ernest. The Short Story in English. Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel, 1900-1939. London ; New York : Macmillan, 1977.
• --::-- The Alchemy of Laughter : Comedy in English fiction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Macmillan Press ; New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.
• Holbrook, David. "Two Welsh Writers: T. F. Powys and Dylan Thomas", in The Modern Age (The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol.7), ed Boris Ford. London: Penguin, (1961)1964.
• Gervais, David. "T. F. Powys: Invention and Myth. English". The Journal of the English Association 45. 181 (1996 Spring): 62-78.
• Van Kranendonk, A. G. '"T. F. Powys". English Studies, 26:1 (1944), 97-107.
• Steinmann, Martin. "Water and Animal Symbolism in T. F. Powys", English Studies. 41:1 (1960), 359-365.
• Gunnell, B. "T. F. Powys's Unclay, or the Unconditional Gift". Durham University Journal, 85:1 (1993), 95.

See also The Powys Review, The Powys Journal and Powys Notes for further articles, etc.

Archives

• Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, Correspondence and literary papers.
• British Library. Letters to Vera Wainwright, Add. MS 54330. ·
• London Universiy Library. Letters to Charles Lahr and literary mss.·
• National Library of Wales. Letters to John Cowper Powys. ·
• University of Aberdeen Library. Letters to J. B. Chapman.

The Powys Society's website has a comprehensive list of archives.

External Links

• The Powys Society. http://www.powys-society.org/
• The Brynmill Press. http://www.edgewaysbooks.com/
• An article by John Gray on T F Powys, published in the New Statesman.http://www.newstatesman.com/200112030043