The Powys Society was founded in 1967. In 1972 was held at Cambridge the very first Conference, for the centenary of the birth of John Cowper Powys. On this occasion lectures were given, especially by G. Wilson Knight, Angus Wilson and George Steiner. This momentous event was transcribed in the first number of The Powys Review (Spring 1977). It is, I think, interesting to come back to Steiner's lecture, entitled "The Difficulties of Reading John Cowper Powys", and to meditate on the few facts he mentioned which explained the so-called "difficulties". Apart from the disastrous and negative judgments and dismissals by men such as Dr. Leavis, which partly explain why there was at that time no general biography, no bibliography, the main problem was that there were practically NO BOOKS in print ! Apparently, Penguin had agreed, with some reluctance says Steiner, to publish Powys in their Twentieth Century Classics, but the New Statesman's  review after Wolf Solent's  publication put an end to Penguin's endeavours. And Steiner adds : "There's absolutely no doubt that if there had been a breakthrough with Penguin the situation would have been profoundly different throughout the reading community". For a time, though, the situation seemed to improve. Several publishers appeared: Picador, Rivers Press with Weymouth Sands,  Macdonald, Carcanet Press, and Colgate University Press in the States. But certainly the most important of all was Village Press to which all Powysians are in debt for the tremendous work J. Kwintner accomplished, enabling us to purchase most of J.C. Powys's books at reasonable prices.
   Today I am glad to say the situation has improved. Since the extraordinary success of A Glastonbury Romance published in 1997 by Overlook Press in the US, Penguin has followed suit with their own edition of the same novel this summer. They have also announced their intention of publishing Weymouth Sands in March 2000 and Wolf Solent with a new introduction by A.N. Wilson in May 2000. In France, almost all his work has been translated, the latest one being L'Art de Vieillir, published January '99. Some titles are also available in German, Swedish, Italian. Or you may be one of those who haunt, as Powys writes, the most flagrant of houses "of ill-fame", a second-hand bookshop, "where all the outlawed thoughts of humanity can take refuge" and there suddenly hit upon one of his magnificent "Romances", as he called them, or find his Poems, his Letters, his Philosophical tracts, his stimulating Literary Studies...

Jacqueline Peltier, December 1999