Edited by Paul Roberts



    John Cowper Powys spent the first three decades of the twentieth century travelling to and fro across the American continent delivering his remarkable and inspirational lectures, at the same time producing an apparently endless stream of words: diaries, poetry, letters, novels, works of philosophy and a formidable number of essays, which are here collected for the first time.
    A a 'resident alien' who came to know men and women from every social level, Powys is able to cast a particularly illuminating light upon American society. As a writer and lecturer, he also established long-lasting friendships with many of the leading literary figures of his day, particularly Theodore Dreiser and Edgar Lee Masters, to whom significant sections of this volume are devoted.
 










    Although he is often regarded as a peculiarly English, even regional writer, Paul Roberts argues in his introduction that without Powys's experience of American life and culture, his greatest works would never have been written.
    The Uncollected Essays of John Cowper Powys, of which this is the first volume, is a major project which brings together one hundred essays written over a period of sixty years and covering the entire range of Powys's literary, social and philosophical interests. Two companion volumes are planned: England Revisited: Essays on English life and literature and Powys's own life and work, and The Wind That Waves the Grass: Essays on European and Russian literature and social and philosophical issues.
 
215mm x 138mm, 251 pp.
ISBN 1-897967-20-9.                 £19.95