Literary Genes Mr Wilfred Ashton, of Saffron Walden, Essex, Writes To

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Literary Genes Mr Wilfred Ashton, of Saffron Walden, Essex, writes to draw the attention of our readers to the blood relationship between William Cowper and the Dorset writer John Cowper Powys (1872-1963). Powys was a prolific author of poetry and essays but is best known for his vast, brooding novels, including Wolf Solent, Maiden Castle and A Glastonbury Romance. His brothers Llewellyn and Theodore were also major writers, the latter remembered for his allegorical Mr Weston's Good Wine, in which God comes down to earth in the genial person of Mr Weston. Research by George Davies on Cowper's family tree reveals that J.C.P. was a first cousin of the poet, four times removed. The line traces back to Cowper's mother, Anne Donne (1703- 1737) whose grand-nephew Rev. John Johnson (1769-1833) was J.C.P.'s great-grandfather. Johnson was of course Cowper's beloved nephew 'Johnny of Norfolk' who was such a source of cheer, comfort and solace to William and Mrs Unwin, especially in their frail old age: in 1795, he moved them into his own house at East Dereham, the better to be able to care for them. It is interesting to note that both his eldest son and his grandson (vicar of Montacute, Somerset, and brother of J.C.P.'s mother, Mary Cowper Johnson) were given 'William Cowper' as their first names. Cowper's mother claimed to be descended from John Donne (1572-1631), leading 'Metaphysical' poet and Dean of St Paul's (although, it has to be said, there is scant genealogical evidence for this). John Donne, William Cowper, John Cowper Powys—any search for a common thread linking these three writers remotely related by blood and widely separated by time can be prompted by no more than wishful thinking. Nevertheless, all three did manifest a strong religious sense and a powerful impulse towards self-questioning and soul-searching—even if in J.C.P.'s case as much influenced by pagan as by Christian beliefs. All in the genes? Tony Seward .

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Staging the Obscene in a Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys
Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world 21 | 2020 Modernism and the Obscene Staging the Obscene in A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys Florence Marie Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/27847 DOI: 10.4000/miranda.27847 ISSN: 2108-6559 Publisher Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Electronic reference Florence Marie, “Staging the Obscene in A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys ”, Miranda [Online], 21 | 2020, Online since 09 October 2020, connection on 16 February 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/27847 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.27847 This text was automatically generated on 16 February 2021. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Staging the Obscene in A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys 1 Staging the Obscene in A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys Florence Marie 1 “Nobody quite knows what the word ‘obscene’ itself means, or what it is intended to mean: but gradually all the old words that belong to the body below the navel have come to be judged as obscene. Obscene means today that the policeman thinks he has a right to arrest you, nothing else” (Lawrence 625). As made clear by D. H. Lawrence in 1929, there existed no definition of the term “obscenity” under English statute law. Nevertheless the idea that “fiction has the power to corrupt and offend in its cultural significance” (Potter 2013b, 10) and as a consequence that censorship was advisable was still very much in the foreground in the 1920s.
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n Wiseman, Sam (2013) Transience, technology and cosmopolitanism: the reimagining of place in English modernism. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4650/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Transience, Technology and Cosmopolitanism: The Reimagining of Place in English Modernism Sam Wiseman PhD Thesis English Literature University of Glasgow 2013 Abstract Recent work by scholars including Jed Esty and Alexandra Harris has emphasised a renewed focus among English interwar modernist writers upon rural landscapes, culture and traditions. This thesis builds upon such work in examining that focus in the prose works of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), Mary Butts (1890-1937) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). All of these figures have a profound sense of attachment to place, but an equally powerful desire to engage with the upheavals of interwar modernity – in terms of urbanisation, cosmopolitanism, and developments in technology and transportation – and to participate in contemporary literary experimentation. This dialectic between tradition and change, I argue, is analogous to a literal geographical shuttling between rural and metropolitan environments, and in all four writers I identify imagery and literary techniques which reflect those experiences, and are applied across diverse geographical realms.
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