John Cowper Powys Thomas Hardy, and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset, part of Hardy's mythical Wessex. American scholar Richard Maxwell describes these four novels "as remarkably successful with the reading public of his time". "Maiden Castle", the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which he intended to be a "rival" to Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge". All the same, despite his indebtedness to the Victorian novel and his enthusiasm for Hardy and Walter Scott, as well as for lesser figures such as Ainsworth, Powys was clearly a modernist, and has affinities also with Fyodor
Waverley Novels Waverley Novels The Waverley Novels are a long series of novels by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). For nearly a century, they were among the most popular and widely read novels in all of Europe. Because Scott did not publicly acknowledge authorship until 1827, the series takes its name from "Waverley", the first novel of the series released in 1814. The later books bore the words "by the author of "Waverley"" on their title pages. The "Tales of my Landlord" sub-series was not advertised as "by the author of "Waverley"" and thus is not always included as part of the Waverley