What do you think?
Rate this book
Black Bryony
{ 15.34 x 23.59 cms} Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2022 with the help of original edition published long back [1923]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume, if you wish to order a specific or all the volumes you may contact us. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - English, Pages 200. EXTRA 10 DAYS APART FROM THE NORMAL SHIPPING PERIOD WILL BE REQUIRED FOR LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.} Complete Black bryony / T.F. Powys ; with five woodcuts by R.A. Garnett. 1923 Powys, Theodore Francis, -.
184 pages, hardcover
First published January 1, 1923
10 people want to read
About the author
T.F. Powys
52 books27 followersTheodore Francis Powys, published as T. F. 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, grand-daughter of Dr John Johnson, cousin and close friend 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).
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.
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, Miguel de Cervantes, Jeremy Taylor, Jonathan Swift, and Henry Fielding. Among more recent writers, he admired Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
He died on 27 November 1953 in Mappowder, Dorset, where he was buried. [from wikipedia, adapted]
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.
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, Miguel de Cervantes, Jeremy Taylor, Jonathan Swift, and Henry Fielding. Among more recent writers, he admired Thomas Hardy, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
He died on 27 November 1953 in Mappowder, Dorset, where he was buried. [from wikipedia, adapted]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 28, 2018
Misanthropic little novel intermixing epic/gothic, with most characters exhibiting tragi-comic levels of baseness, credulity, and stupidity. Beware the title doesn't just refer to an abortifacient plant, but also .
April 23, 2015
Black Bryony was T.F.Powys's first novel, and as such it has a somewhat unfinished quality: many of the themes and events he would explore in later works appear here in embryonic form. An obscure British village populated eccentrics and bullies becomes a stage to tragedy and catharsis, told with a dose of the absurd and the fabulous.
The title does not refer to a character in the novel, but to Black Bryony the plant, aka Dioscorea communis, a highly poisonous berry that appears as a portent of doom. As a character puts it:
"Tis known well there that they green leaves a-climbing up so strong do mean a fat church-yard in late summer-time."
It's also hinted to be a crude abortifacient...
Though its plot is thin, Black Bryony's greatest strength is its powerful, almost suffocating atmosphere. There is a constant sense of some awful fate lurking around the corner: a shadow crosses the face of the moon, though there are no clouds in the sky. Rural life is portrayed as violent and miserable. Children throw stones at a sheep out of boredom, cutting its eye. A farmer shoots a seagull out of the sky for sheer amusement and watches it flopping around on the ground. Character stumble through their lives full of resentment or fear.
"'What did they stars want to come out so early for?' he wondered. They always made him feel so late when he saw them.
The carrier could see no human use in the stars."
It remains to be seen just which of Black Bryony's (too) many characters will fall victim to the plant's curse, and which of them, if any, will come out of the story happy. There's Mary Crowle, the cruel but vivacious Salvation Army preacher, "too pretty to be safe", her lover Hugh Crossley, the spoiled Vicar's son, and Matthew Hurd, beleagured schoolmaster, whose young charges are only interested in "country matters", as he puts it, quoting Hamlet with entirely intentional innuendo.
Poetic, bleak and evocative, Black Bryony is a rural gothic novel with a quality of retold myth.
The title does not refer to a character in the novel, but to Black Bryony the plant, aka Dioscorea communis, a highly poisonous berry that appears as a portent of doom. As a character puts it:
"Tis known well there that they green leaves a-climbing up so strong do mean a fat church-yard in late summer-time."
It's also hinted to be a crude abortifacient...
Though its plot is thin, Black Bryony's greatest strength is its powerful, almost suffocating atmosphere. There is a constant sense of some awful fate lurking around the corner: a shadow crosses the face of the moon, though there are no clouds in the sky. Rural life is portrayed as violent and miserable. Children throw stones at a sheep out of boredom, cutting its eye. A farmer shoots a seagull out of the sky for sheer amusement and watches it flopping around on the ground. Character stumble through their lives full of resentment or fear.
"'What did they stars want to come out so early for?' he wondered. They always made him feel so late when he saw them.
The carrier could see no human use in the stars."
It remains to be seen just which of Black Bryony's (too) many characters will fall victim to the plant's curse, and which of them, if any, will come out of the story happy. There's Mary Crowle, the cruel but vivacious Salvation Army preacher, "too pretty to be safe", her lover Hugh Crossley, the spoiled Vicar's son, and Matthew Hurd, beleagured schoolmaster, whose young charges are only interested in "country matters", as he puts it, quoting Hamlet with entirely intentional innuendo.
Poetic, bleak and evocative, Black Bryony is a rural gothic novel with a quality of retold myth.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews