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 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