Writers of Wales: The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse & John Cowper Powys

09 March 2013 - February 2014

The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse

A look at the history of The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse which was published fifty years ago, and the varied reaction Sir Thomas Parry’s notable anthology received; an anthology which is still widely used in schools and universities across Wales.

The exhibition includes original manuscripts of some of the poems that appeared in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse, letters showing the relationship between Sir Thomas Parry and the Clarendon Press as well as a number of notable Welsh figures, reviews of the anthology, and some of the history of other poetry anthologies in the Welsh Language.

John Cowper Powys

The author of novels, poetry, philosophical works and essays, John Cowper Powys published over fifty literary works in his lifetime, but his strange imagination and writing style has led to him being described as a form of literary Marmite.

This exhibition presents manuscripts of some of John Cowper Powys’s most famous novels, Wolf Solent and A Glastonbury Romance, and also aims to reveal aspects of his personal life through letters to his life companion, Phyllis Playter, and literary figures such as E.E. Cummings and Henry Miller, along with the diaries he kept whilst living in America and North Wales.

His connection with Wales through his father’s family and his time living in North Wales had a great influence on John Cowper Powys, and in this exhibition it becomes clear how Wales’s history and mythology came to affect his literary work.