SOURCE: "Strangest of Geniuses," in The Spectator, Vol. 224, No. 8702, April 22, 1995, pp. 32-33.

In the following review of Petrushka and the Dancer, Wilson credits Powys's companion Phyllis Playter for her inspirational support.

It would be interesting to know how these diaries would strike a reader who did not know the four great novels of John Cowper Powys: Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands and Maiden Castle, or his magnificent collection of essays, The Pleasures of Literature; or his superb essay on "The Art of Happiness," or his Autobiography, which deserves to be placed on the shelf beside Saint Augustine and Rousseau. In the period covered by these journals, all these great books were produced.

Powys is one of those authors who is omnipresent in his work. To read his novels is to be confronted with his extraordinary personality—his 'manias', his pantheism, his vivid empathy for the sorrows...