A Glastonbury Romance A Glastonbury Romance A Glastonbury Romance was written by John Cowper Powys (1873–1963) in rural upstate New York and first published by Simon and Schuster in New York City in March 1932. An English edition published by John Lane followed in 1933. It is the second of Powys's Wessex novels, along with "Wolf Solent" (1929), "Weymouth Sands" (1934) and "Maiden Castle" (1936). Powys was an admirer of Thomas Hardy and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset parts of Hardy's mythical Wessex. The first two chapters of "A Glastonbury Romance" takes place in Norfolk, where the late Canon William
Thomas Hardy's Wessex "Off Wessex". Similarly, the nature and significance of ideas of "Wessex" were developed over a long series of novels through a lengthy period of time. The idea of Wessex plays an important artistic role in Hardy's works (particularly his later novels), assisting the presentation of themes of progress, primitivism, sexuality, religion, nature and naturalism; however, this is complicated by the economic role Wessex played in Hardy's career. Considering himself primarily to be a poet, Hardy wrote novels mostly to earn money. Books that could be marketed under the Hardy brand of "Wessex novels" were particularly lucrative, which gave rise to