In keeping with the value he placed on the private imagination and a sense of individuality, John Cowper Powys holds a unique place in British fantasy and science-fiction literature. His published output spans novels, fantasy fables and stories, autobiography, literary criticism, popularizations of his philosophy, poetry, diaries, letters, book reviews, and appreciations. His early literary reputation was based on his philosophical and critical essays, which were attractive to the "common man" and capitalized on his prominence as an inspirational public lecturer in the United States. But Powys is remembered today primarily for his fiction, much of it ostensibly in the realist mode, in which he embeds macabre and fantastic elements such as apparitions, magician seers, mythic archetypes, giants, fairies, and miraculous events. His vision of the universe is a dynamic, pluralistic one in which the inanimate, the sensual, and the spiritual or supernatural are fluidly integrated. The individual's...