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Theodore Francis Powys (20 December 1875 – 27 November 1953) – published as T. F. Powys – was a British novelist and short-story writer. He is best remembered for his allegorical novel Mr. Weston's Good Wine (1927), where Weston the wine merchant is evidently God. Powys was influenced by the Bible, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift and other writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as later writers such as Thomas Hardy and Friederich Nietzsche.

Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys (1843–1923), vicar of Montacute, Somerset, for 32 years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He was one of eleven talented siblings, including the novelist John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) and the novelist and essayist Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939). Their sister Philippa Powys also published a novel and some poetry, while Marian Powys was an authority on lace and lace-making and published a book on this subject. Gertrude Powys was a painter. Another brother, A. R. Powys, was secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and published a number of books on architectural subjects.

A sensitive child, Powys was not happy in school and left when he was 15 to become an apprentice on a farm in Suffolk. Later he had his own farm in Suffolk, but he was not successful and returned to Dorset in 1901 with plans to be a writer. Then, in 1905, he married Violet Dodd. They had two sons and later adopted a daughter. From 1904 until 1940 Theodore Powys lived in East Chaldon but then moved to Mappowder because of the war.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Powys was one of several UK writers who campaigned for aid to be sent to the Republican side.

The novels Mr. Weston's Good Wine (1927) and Unclay (1931) and the short-story collection Fables are most praised, while his early non-fiction work The Soliloquy of a Hermit (1916) also has its admirers. Powys was deeply, if unconventionally, religious; the Bible was a major influence, and he had a special affinity with writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, including John Bunyan, Cervantes, Jeremy Taylor, Jonathan Swift, and Henry Fielding. Among more recent writers, he admired Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Powys has been described by C. N. Manlove as one of the three main writers – along with C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams – of "Christian fantasy" in the 20th century.

He died on 27 November 1953 in Mappowder, Dorset, where he was buried.

Bibliography

Non-fiction

• An Interpretation of Genesis. N.p.: Privately printed,1907.
• Soliloquy of a Hermit. New York: G. Arnlod Shaw, 1916 (Soliloquies of a Hermit 1918). Available online

Novels

• Black Bryony. London: Chatto and Windus, 1923; New York: Knopf, 1923.
• Mark Only. London: Chatto and Windus, 1924; New York: Knopf, 1924.
• Mr Tasker's Gods. London: Chatto and Windus, 1925; New York: Knopf, 1925.
• Mockery Gap. London: Chatto and Windus, 1925; New York: Knopf, 1925.
• Mr. Weston's Good Wine. London: Chatto and Windus, 1927; New York: Viking, 1927.
• Kindness in a Corner. London : Chatto and Windus, 1930; New York: Viking, 1930.
• Unclay. London: Chatto and Windus, 1931; New York: Viking, 1932.
• The Market Bell, edited with notes by Ian Robinson, assisted by Elaine Mencher; with an afterword by J. Lawrence Mitchell. Doncaster, South Yorkshire : Brynmill Press, 1991.