Maiden Castle (novel) Maiden Castle (novel) Maiden Castle by John Cowper Powys was first published in 1936 and is the last of Powys so-called Wessex novels, following "Wolf Solent" (1929), "A Glastonbury Romance" (1932), "Weymouth Sands" (1934). Powys was an admirer of 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" is set in Dorchester, Dorset Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which Powys intended to be a "rival" to Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge". Glen Cavaliero describes Dorchester
Æthelred of Wessex Æthelred of Wessex Æthelred I (Old English: "Æþelræd", sometimes rendered as Ethelred, "noble counsel"; – 871) was King of Wessex from 865 to 871. He was the fourth son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. He succeeded his brother, Æthelberht (Ethelbert), as King of Wessex and Kent in 865. In 853 his younger brother Alfred went to Rome, and according to contemporary references in the "Liber Vitae" of San Salvatore, Brescia, Æthelred accompanied him. He first witnessed his father's charters as an Ætheling in 854, and kept this title until he succeeded to the throne in 865. He may have acted