T. F. Powys

Theodore Francis Powys (20 December 1875 – 27 November 1953) – published as T. F. Powys – was a British novelist and short-story writer. He is best remembered for his allegorical novel Mr. Weston's Good Wine, where Weston the wine merchant is evidently God. Powys's writings were influenced by the Bible, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift and other writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as later writers such as Thomas Hardy and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Biography Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys (1843–1923), vicar of Montacute, Somerset, for 32 years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, grand-daughter of Dr John Johnson, cousin and close friend of the poet William Cowper. He was one of eleven talented siblings, including the novelist John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) and the novelist and essayist Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939). Their sister Philippa Powys also published a novel and some poetry, while Marian Powys was an authority on lace and lace-making and published a book on this subject. Gertrude Powys was a painter. Another brother, A. R. Powys, was secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and published a number of books on architectural subjects. Sailors return, East Chaldon. Powys lived in East Chaldon from 1904 to 1940. A sensitive child, Powys was not happy in school and left when he was 15 to become an apprentice on a farm in Suffolk.

The novels Mr. Weston's Good Wine (1927) and Unclay (1931) and the short-story collection Fables are most praised, while his early non-fiction work The Soliloquy of a Hermit (1916) also has its admirers. Among more recent writers, he admired Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Powys has been described by C. N. Manlove as one of the three main writers – along with C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams – of "Christian fantasy" in the 20th century.

He died on 27 November 1953 in Mappowder, Dorset, where he was buried.