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
Wessex Wessex Wessex (; , the "kingdom of the West Saxons") was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from 519 until England was unified by Æthelstan in the early 10th century. The Anglo-Saxons believed that Wessex was founded by Cerdic and Cynric, but this may be a legend. The two main sources for the history of Wessex are the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" and the "West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List", which sometimes conflict. Wessex became a Christian kingdom after Cenwalh was baptised and was expanded under his rule. Cædwalla later conquered Sussex, Kent and the Isle of Wight. His successor,