The War and Culture

A work of wartime propaganda written whilst Powys was working on the lecturing circuit in the United States. The volume was published by his agent, G. Arnold Shaw who, apart from being a very able manager for Powys, was probably also the most important of his publishers. He was the first to encourage and publish John Cowper, starting with this very volume.

This was also issued in England as The Menace of German Culture in February, W. Rider and Son, London, 1915 (Rider was the publisher of JCP’s earlier poetry volumes).

The book.

John Cowper Powys, The War and Culture: A Reply to Professor Münsterberg, G. Arnold Shaw, New York, 1914.

© John Dunn.

Poems 1899

Kenneth Hopkins, in The Brothers Powys, wrote that the improvement in the poems of this volume might have been attributable to the influence of Alfed de Kantzow, an impoverished nobleman from Poland. ‘Mr de Kantzow was a poet of no small power’ comments Hopkins.

This volume was, like the first, published by Rider and Son with the financial help of his father and also this time of his cousin, Ralph Shirley.

My volume still has the tattered, but rare, remnants of the original tissue dust jacket, which has kept the gold stamped fleurs-de-lis on the front cover in pristine condition.

The book.

J. C. Powys, Poems, London, William Rider and Son Ltd., 1899.

© John Dunn.

Odes and Other Poems

Powys’ first published work, financed by his father and issued in 1896 at 3/6.

Issued in a light green cloth with front cover gold stamped with fleurs-de-lis and webbing between the flowers. My own copy shows off this gold stamping in pristine as-new condition. There is no title on the spine.

Opening with ‘To the Great God Pan’, Powys was in tune with the times, dedicating his pagan work to the occult from the outset, predating Aleister Crowley’s own ‘Hymn to Pan’ by 17 years.

Apart from his own obvious influence on others, Powys reveals the influence upon himself of Algernon Charles Swinburne in this volume. This is most direct of course in ‘To A. C. Swinburne’, but also in other poems more obliquely, especially ‘Ode to Proserpine’.

The book.

John Cowper Powys, Odes and Other Poems, London, William Rider and Son Ltd., 1896.

© John Dunn.

A Bibliography of the Writings of John Cowper Powys

My favourite bibliography of works by John Cowper Powys is by Dante Thomas.  This interesting volume published in 1975 has an inscription by Thomas to the antiquarian book selling legend of Minnesota, Melvin McCosh (1927 - 2007).

The book.

Dante Thomas, A Bibliography of the Writings of John Cowper Powys 1872 - 1963, Foreword by G. Wilson Knight, Mamaroneck, New York, 1975.

Melvin McCosh

© John Dunn.