John Cowper Powys, OM, was an English writer. He was also a poet, novelist, essayist, biographer and critic. He was born in Clifton Hampden, near Bristol. After being educated at Malvern College he went to Balliol College, Oxford University where he began to write poetry
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He next gained employment as the editor of a small provincial newspaper in North Devonshire. There he wrote a novel, The Father and Son, which was published in 1908 and made a great impression on his contemporaries. In 1909 he became lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham.
In 1911 he married Elspeth Thomson and the couple moved to Cornwall where Powys began writing novels and poems that reflected his love of that area of England. In 1913 Powys moved with his family to a farmhouse near Glastonbury where he began experimenting with different types of organic farming. This experimentation with organic farming continued during the Second World War when Powys designed a crop rotation system for his garden in order to minimize the effect on the soil of wartime bombing.