George E. J. Powell

George Ernest John Powell (1842–1882 ) was a Welsh antiquary and collector known for his association with the Nanteos Cup, a medieval wood mazer bowl. He published poetry under the penname Miölnir Nanteos (or Miôlnir Nanteos) and translated two volumes of translations of Icelandic legends with the Icelandic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon.

Biography George Ernest John Powell was born on 10 February 1842, the son of [William] Thomas Rowland Powell (1815–1878) of Nanteos near Aberystwyth, who was the MP for Cardiganshire, and his wife Rosa Edwyna. George Powell inherited the Nanteos estate on the death of his father in 1878. The "'splendid old place' was said to be a 'home'" to Powell "in all but a 'sentimental sense'".

Powell, an amateur poet in his youth, was a close friend of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, whom he met while studying at Brasenose College, Oxford. Swinburne had a long-held "fascination" for the Arthurian legends and was a close associate of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, both of whom shared the same interest. Morris and Edward Burne-Jones spent "much time reading and discussing" Le Morte d'Arthur while at Oxford, and Rossetti contributed designs for woodcut illustrations to the Arthurian poems in an 1857 edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's work. During the summer of 1857 Morris and Rossetti took a commission to paint the upper walls and roof of the Oxford Union debating-hall with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur.

Swinburne had first read the story of Tristan and Iseult as a child, and at Oxford, influenced by Morris, wrote a number of Arthurian poems including Queen Yseult, Lancelot and Joyeuse Garde. Following the publication of Tennyson's The Holy Grail in 1869 Swinburne "set to work in earnest on the theme of Tristram and Iseult."

Powell was also "a fanatical devotee" of German composer Richard Wagner and attended the first performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen as a complete cycle at Bayreuth, Germany, in August 1876. In September 1876 Powell wrote to Swinburne that he had subsequently dined with Wagner and his wife Cosima.

Powel married Dinah T. Harries of Goodwick, Pembrokeshire, on 10 May 1881. He died without issue in 1882 following a short illness, and the estate was inherited by his father's cousin William Beauclerk Powell (1834–1911). He was buried in Llanbadarn Fawr churchyard.

Publications