A Glastonbury Romance

‘Truly extraordinary … a very earthquake of a book … incontestably great’ The Times

Powys' great visionary novel, now in Penguin Modern Classics

One of the great cult novels, a book that can be read and re-read throughout a lifetime, A Glastonbury Romance is John Cowper Powys' masterpiece. Set in a beautifully imagined fictional version of the West Country, the novel inhabits a twentieth century under siege from older and stranger forces.

An epic work of terrific force and lyrical intensity, interweaving the ancient with the modern, the novel probes the mystical and spiritual ethos of Glastonbury and its association with the legend of the Grail. At the heart of the book is the vision of one man, who wishes to make Glastonbury again the great pilgrimage centre it once was. But what really lies in this powerful landscape and why did so many men and women once come to it seeking redemption?

The edition used for this Penguin Classics edition is the original 1932 American text.

‘A masterpiece ... Open any page and you can find something wonderful’ Margaret Drabble

‘Possibly the greatest novel of the twentieth century, and one of the great mystical masterpieces of all time’ Colin Wilson

‘To encounter Powys ... is to arrive at the very fount of creation’ Henry Miller