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
Wessex Saddleback band resembling a saddle (or "sheet"). It is a tall, rangy animal, adapted to foraging in woodland, its traditional use. This use survived longest in the New Forest, where pigs are still allowed to forage in woods for mast (acorns, beech-nuts and chestnuts) – but the New Forest pigs no longer include pure-bred Wessex Saddlebacks. There is some confusion about the origin of the Wessex Saddleback. Some sources state that it began as a cross of "the black breed of the New Forest" and "the Old English Sheeted breed", spreading through Hampshire and the Isle of Purbeck in the 18th