A Glastonbury Romance

by John Cowper Powys

Book Overview

A Glastonbury Romance , first published in 1932, is Powys masterwork, an epic novel of terrific cumulative force and lyrical intensity. In it he probes the mystical and spiritual ethos of the small English village of Glastonbury, and the effect upon its inhabitants of a mythical tradition from the remotest past of human history - the legend of the Grail. Powys's rich iconography interweaves the ancient with the modern, the historical with the legendary,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879512822
• ISBN13: 9780879512828
• Release Date: November 1987
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 1120 Pages
• Weight: 2.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 5.7" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

The Enchanted World

This work simply comprises too much to be encapsulated in any sort of review I might proffer here.-Realising this essential fact, I'll just confine myself to what makes this work one of the greatest achievements in 20th Century literature. Powys has a unique depth of insight - and poetic way of expressing this insight - into what makes people who they are and do what they do. He has the rare gift of being able to express this extra dimension to each personality in lovely (almost dancing, I would say)language. This is Powys major accomplishment, and the reason anyone interested in deep, powerful literature should read this deliciously meandering tome. A couple other footnotes here: 1)The Russian writer Powys resembles most is not Tolstoy, but Dostoyevsky, with his insights into the twisted and sinuous dreamworld behind human personality-Only Powys easily betters him. 2) When I looked Powys up in an encyclopaedia of authors, the article on Powys concluded that "his admirers have largely been confined to those readers who share his interest in the esoteric."-This is rubbish. The Arthurian legends, The Grail, The Passion Play and all other "esoterica" here are important only because they represent motives and psychic depths in the characters--One can read this book quite easily and with great appreciation, as I did, and complete it having no further interest whatsoever in the arcana of the Holy Grail legend. Well, let's let Powys have the last word here: The composers of fiction aim at a verisimilitude which seldom corresponds to the much more eccentric and chaotic dispositions of Nature. Only rarely are such writers so torn and rent that they can add their own touch to the wave crests of real actuality as these foam up, bringing wreckage and sea-tangle and living and dead ocean monsters and bloody spume and bottom silt into the rainbow spray! p.666 Quite. Powys does. Read it!

When too much is enough

This is one of those books (and Powys one of those writers) that--by being so large and encompassing--escapes any common measure of criticism. Which is a way of saying that "A Glastonbury Romance" is a true act of genius, the work of an incredibly gifted personality (as much as writer) who, in this book, upends the established line of English novel-writing. As noted in these reviews, the flaws in the book are obvious, including the fact that several of the characters are less specific and "round" than they are stand-ins for types. And the writing can be vague on key points: for instance, I never really understood what the blasphemous book was that Mr. Evans couldn't resist succumbing to in the cellar of the bookstore (which, admittedly, may have been because of poor reading or comprehension on my part). Moreover, in my own artistic practice (which is photography), I'm scrupulous about employing utter descriptive clarity as my means to achieve meaning, so the odds of my responding to Powys--whose often inflated invocations to the First Cause and other invisible entities fill a number of pages in this novel--would seem unlikely at best. But, but, but... there's simply nothing else like it in English: for example (among other things), the great tumble of characters and events and place and history so strenuously thrown together under the touch and light of a constantly changing (and telling) weather; the brilliance of the landscape description (though perhaps even stronger, if such were possible, in Powys' "Wolf Solent"), which honors and expands that found in the major English poets; and the frank directness of Powys' examination of sexuality, are a few of "Glastonbury's" qualities that contribute to a reading experience that, as confusing and exhausting as it can be, re-vaildates, in an artistically inglorious time, the "old dispensation," where wanting and attempting TOO much was a road that could lead to the most exalted end. P. S. If there IS anything else like this book in English, it would be that other wondrous (19th-century) novel-examination of a small English village, George Eliot's "Middlemarch." P. P. S. For those interested in such things, "The Glastonbury Romance" was a literary touchstone for the young John Boorman, who later invoked its Authurian mysteries in his beautiful film, "Excalibur."

Microcosmic epic of the ancient and the modern

Several attributes distinguish John Cowper Powys as a novelist, and the most prominent, as displayed by "A Glastonbury Romance," is his penchant for long, dense, erudite novels; he is fascinated with mythology and likes to instill his essentially mundane settings with the fantasy and mystique of ages long past; and he tends to be profoundly philosophical in regard to the First Cause. This "Romance" is not a typical heroic epic; the characters are common people who live in the town of Glastonbury, in Somerset County, England, but, like Thomas Hardy's aesthetic successor, Powys creates with his townspeople a vivid microcosm, imitating their peculiar dialect and manners with formidable accuracy. Structurally, "A Glastonbury Romance" is in the nineteenth-century English tradition of long, labyrinthine novels of the kind composed by Dickens and Eliot, containing dozens of characters and several concurrent plot threads, but it is updated to the early twentieth century with contemporary political and sexual issues. Most of the action centers on a family called Crow who, at the beginning of the novel, have convened in Glastonbury for the funeral of, and to hear the will of, their recently deceased patriarch William. The most successful of William's grandsons is Philip Crow, an industrialist who owns a dye factory and a cave complex called Wookey Hole through which flows an underground river and from which tin is mined. The novel's conflicts are political, romantic, and spiritual on a grand scale. The town's capitalism represented by Philip Crow is challenged by a small group of communists, led by the idealistic Dave Spear and a local churl named Red Robinson, who want to gain political control of Glastonbury and turn it into a worker-governed commune. "Bloody Johnny" Geard, William Crow's former secretary, is elected Mayor through the support of the communists and becomes Philip's nemesis; although in the novel's concluding flood, a passage of enormous lyrical power and intense drama, the two men agree in a climactic scene on a surprisingly chivalrous course of action that reveals they are more heroic than their personalities originally suggested. This modern story is immersed in the aura of ancient legends -- Welsh, Celtic, and Biblical, from King Arthur to the Holy Grail to Stonehenge, mystical ingredients in Powys's pungent narrative stew. Perhaps reflecting Powys himself is a Welsh Arthurian antiquary named Owen Evans who has devoted his life to the study of local lore and is writing a history of Merlin the magician. Despite his enthusiastic attentions to the mysteries of the past, Powys is not as much of a misoneist here as he was in "Wolf Solent"; he ungrudgingly allows airplanes in his novel, granting us a brief but wonderful bird's-eye view of Somersetshire.Although Powys's weighty style greatly appeals to me, this novel is not something I'd casually recommend to just anybody because it does require a considerable investment of the reade

Great work of a unique genius

Powys is a unique literary genius, capable of writing at times with remarkable strength, vision and beauty. Some of this book (please read past the first page) is full of his bizarre nature-religion (the "First Cause"), but the descriptions of people, landscapes and situations are among the greatest the English language has produced. I was completely bowled over by several scenes (Sam Dekker's solo visit to Nell, the pageant play at the end of Part I, and the long scene in Part II at Zoyland's house in particular). Powys has a unique and powerful insight into the human soul and human sensation. I read avidly through all 1120 pages (!), enjoying all of it. His characters all live intensely, and came to life on his pages.I've visited Glastonbury a couple of times, and found much of the description, particularly the unusual atmospheric effects in that place, to be accurate. I ordered a map of Glastonbuy in 1902 from a website in England, which was very helpful in terms of figuring out where everything was.I've been perusing Powys' "Autobiography" and my view of the book has been changing slightly, particularly of the character of Owen Evans and Powys' obsession with sadism. Many of Powys' figures seem to be various reflections of his own personality or people he has encountered in his life, which I suppose is true of any writer, only moreso here.Regardless, I found this book very meaningful and important on a personal level, which is an unusual reaction for a jaded reader like myself. I wouldn't call the book life-changing as much as life-explaining. It was such a refreshing read after so much shallow, empty contemporary garbage that I recommend it especially for those who are sick of modern literature, particularly that written in the past 20 years. This book may not change your life, but it may reaffirm it in ways you had forgotten.

An excellent mystical, spiritual and romantic novel.

A Glastonbury Romance is set in the early 1900s. It begins with a family funeral in eastern England with young childhood friends renewing their relationship. It then moves to Glastonbury in south west England via Stonehenge. It covers all of the Glastonbury society, from the local trades people, upper classes, to the brothel in Paradise district.A Glastonbury Romance is romantic, it is spiritual, it is mystical, it describes the people, the countryside, the town and the their interactions beautifully.