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
Margaret Allan (romance author) Margaret Allan (romance author) Margaret Allan (1922 – 27 June 2017) was an author of romance novels from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. Her first success as an author came when she entered a short story for a "Yorkshire Evening Post" competition in 1973, which she won, and she began writing novels professionally in 1975. Allan continued writing well into her 80s, and during her long career published over 40 books. Many of her novels were set in her native county, including a cycle of four stories set in the fictional village of Nydd Beck. Allan described her works as "not