Biographie de l'auteur
Theodore Francis Powys was born in 1875 at Shirley in Derbyshire, one of the eleven children of the Rev. Charles Powys, an Anglican clergyman of evan¬gelical views. His family was predominantly Welsh but was also related to Donne and Cowper. T. F. Powys, unlike his elder brothers John Cowper and Llewelyn, did not go to Cambridge. Instead, for a short time, he farmed in Suffolk. Then, in 1901, he settled in a labourer's cottage at Studland on the Dorset coast, to live a life of contempla¬tion on his father's allowance of £60 a year. In 1904 he moved to East Chaldon, also in Dorset, and in 1905 married Violet Rosalie Dodds. They had two sons, one of whom died in Kenya. Powys's first book was An Interpretation of Genesis, begun in 1904 and privately printed in 1908. In this he made use of the dialogue form, but it was only in 1916 that he turned to fiction, with Mr Tasker's Gods, an essay in realism published in 1925. In 1917 he wrote Black Bryony, published in 1923. He first became known as a writer with The Left Leg, a collection of three stories, in which his gift for the extended fable begins to emerge. This 'was followed by Mark Only (1924), Mockery Gap (1925) and Innocent Birds (1926). In 1927 came his best-known masterpiece, Mr Weston's Good Wine, an allegory of good and evil in which Mr Weston figures as both wine-merchant and God. Another important book was Fables (1929), largely consisting of dialogues between common¬place objects, and animals. Kindness in a Corner was published in 1930, and in 1931 came The Only Penitent and the last full-length novel, UNCLAY. Throughout this period Powys was also writing short stories, four collections of which were later published. A com¬prehensive selection of them is to be found in God's Eyes A' Twinkle (1947). The same countryside, the same characters, recur from book to book. Within this context operates that startling awareness of men's actions and beliefs which, with his mastery of the humorous understatement and his great originality, marks all T. F. Powys's fiction. In 1940, with his writing career behind him, Powys moved to the quite village of Mappowder in North Dorset where he died in 1953.
Revue de presse
From the Introduction by John Gray: The last full-length novel of T. F. Powys, UNCLAY is the summation of his life s work. Though not without precedents, the manner and the substance of this strange, compelling, not always comfortable book are uniquely his own ... Theodore Powys is a religious writer without any vestige of orthodox belief, a dark poet who celebrates passing beauty and a stark realist who is also a supreme fabulist. Unless one unlocks these paradoxes one cannot fully understand his work, or appreciate the rare delights it contains. [JOHN GRAY is Emeritus Professor of European Thought at London University. He is the author of 'Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals' (Granta), 'Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern' (Faber), 'Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia' (Allen Lane/Penguin) False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (Granta) and other books.] --From the Introduction by John Gray
In my view, UNCLAY is Powys's crowning achievement, since it contains the fullest artistic expression of his meditations on life, beauty, evil, love, and death. - Marius Buning (author of T.F. Powys: A Modern Allegorist ). --T.F. Powys A Modern Allegorist
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
