SOURCE: "Landscape with Figures: The Early Fiction of John Cowper Powys," in Studies in the Literary Imagination, October, 1968, pp. 51-58.

In the following essay, Robillard gives a detailed overview of Powys's early fiction, including Wood and Stone, Rodmoor, Ducdame, Wolf Solent, and A Glastonbury Romance.

The present critical reputation of John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) can be illustrated by the surprise with which his name was mentioned in a recent piece in the New York Times Book Review. In reviewing George Steiner's Language and Silence, the writer took note of the value Steiner seemed to place upon Powys's work; and, indeed, Steiner, who is a welcome champion of Powys, had said that Wolf Solent is the only novel in English to rival Tolstoy. Such are the extremes that a small, insistent minority praises and even risks overpraising their man while the majority simply ignores him. But the quality of scholarship...