British regional literature of London and the south of England. John Cowper Powys has been seen as a successor to Thomas Hardy, and "Wolf Solent", "A Glastonbury Romance" (1932), along with "Weymouth Sands" (1934) and "Maiden Castle" (1936), are often referred to as his Wessex novels. As with Hardy's novels, the landscape plays a major role in Powys's works, and an elemental philosophy is important in the lives of his characters. Powys's first novel "Wood and Stone" was dedicated to Thomas Hardy. "Maiden Castle", the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which he intended to be
Wessex he established earldoms based on the former kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, but initially administered Wessex personally. Within a few years, however, he had created an earldom of Wessex, encompassing all of England south of the Thames, for his English henchman Godwin. For almost fifty years the vastly wealthy holders of this earldom, first Godwin and then his son Harold, were the most powerful men in English politics after the king. Finally, on the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, Harold became king, reuniting the earldom of Wessex with the crown. No new earl was appointed before