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IntroductionThe novelist, philosopher, essayist, critic and poet John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) is most closely associated with Somerset and Dorset, which provide the locations of several of his major novels and where he spent most of his childhood, and with Wales, for which he developed a great affinity and where he lived for the last decades of his life. But the early years of his adult life, from the mid-1890s until around 1910, were spent in Sussex, and Sussex remained his family home until the 1930s, although he was absent for long periods on lecture tours in America from about 1910 onwards. Yet relatively little is known about this period of Powys's life, and although three chapters of his autobiography are devoted to his time in Sussex, many references remain obscure. The aim of this site is to bring Powys's years in Sussex into slightly sharper focus with the help of old and new photographs. Topics have been chosen where they seemed to be of interest; no attempt has been made to provide a detailed account of JCP's life at this period. The site is intended to be viewed at a resolution of 800 x 600. Where enlargements of photographs and other material are provided, they will open in a new browser window in order not to interrupt navigation through the site. Quotations are from Autobiography unless otherwise stated.
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