Philippa Powys

Catharine Edith Philippa Powys (/ˈpoʊ.ɪs/; 8 May 1886 – 11 January 1963)[1] was a British novelist and poet, and a member of one of the most distinguished families in modern literature.

In 1924 she moved into Chydyok, an isolated farmhouse near the majestic Dorset coastline, with her sister, the artist Gertrude Powys.

A couple of miles inland, across whale-backed hills, lay the village of East Chaldon where another brother, Theodore (T.F) Powys, lived as well as the author Sylvia Townsend Warner and poet Valentine Ackland.

Despite never achieving the success of her literary brothers she wrote at least two novels at Chydyok, The Tragedy of Budvale and Joan Callais, as well as a play, The Quick and the Dead, but only the first of these has been published.

That year also saw her only success as a novelist with The Blackthorn Winter, published by Constable in London and by Richard R. Smith in New York, and to be reissued for the first time in late January 2007 by The Sundial Press.