Powys-Lybbe Forbears - Person Sheet
Powys-Lybbe Forbears - Person Sheet
NameTheodore Francis Powys 
[36, p.9], [4, 1881], [3, His birth, Q1 of 1876, Ashborne dist, vol 7?, p. 627], [3, His death, Q4 of 1953, Sturminster dist, vol 6a, p. 517], [4, 1911 ref: RG14PN12331 RG78PN700 RD262 SD4 ED9 SN19], [46, 3rd edition, his burial aged 77 at Mappowder]
[36, p.9], [4, 1881], [3, His birth, Q1 of 1876, Ashborne dist, vol 7?, p. 627], [3, His death, Q4 of 1953, Sturminster dist, vol 6a, p. 517], [4, 1911 ref: RG14PN12331 RG78PN700 RD262 SD4 ED9 SN19], [46, 3rd edition, his burial aged 77 at Mappowder]Birth20 Dec 1875, Shirley, Derby
Death27 Nov 1953, Sturminster district
Burial1 Dec 1953, St Peter & Paul, Mappowder, Dorset
GeneralAuthor.
FatherRev Charles Francis Powys (1843-1923)
MotherMary Cowper Johnson (1849-1914)
Spouses
Marriageca May 1905, Wareham district [44, May 2002], [3, Their marr., Q2 of 1905, Wareham dist, vol 5a, p. 651]
ChildrenTheodore (’Charles ("Dicky")’) (ca1906-1931)
Francis Llewellyn (1909-1998)
Notes for Theodore Francis Powys
In 1933 he/they adopted Theodora Gay who was known as Susan Powys and was born in 1932; she m. Barnard Scott; they had no issue.
_________________________________________________________
Here's a literary bio:
T. F. Powys: Overview
Critic: Brian Stableford
Source: "T. F. Powys: Overview" in St. James Guide
to Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle, St. James
Press, 1996.
Author Covered: T(heodore) F(rancis) Powys (1875-1953), also known as T. F(rancis) Powys, Theodore Francis Powys
Like his elder brother John, Theodore Powys found his father's orthodox theology difficult to reconcile with his experience of the world and of his own inner self, and like John he used fantastic fiction as a means of exploring alternatives. His quest was not as far-ranging; he was able to bring it to a conclusion much sooner and it did not take him into such exotic territory. Indeed, Theodore's fantasies, which are all set in a chain of tiny villages surrounding a hill in Dorset, seem positively claustrophobic by comparison with John's; whereas John eventually journeyed to the limits of the cosmos in search of deities appropriate to his moral philosophy, Theodore simply imported them into his own back yard. The idiosyncratic world-view which informed this process is laid out in Theodore's Soliloquies of a Hermit, which represents emotions like the black despair which periodically possessed him as supernatural forces--"the moods of God"--and imagines Christ (as an idea if not an actual presence) as a force appointed to interrupt and ameliorate these moods.
T. F. Powys's longer fantasies are painstakingly constructed allegories which feature a series of symbolic characters representing God and his agents. The most frequently deployed of these characters, first featured in the novella "The Left Leg," is Mr. Jar (Jehovah). Jar has long been absent from the village in which "The Left Leg" is set, leaving the vile Farmer Mew to exploit his fellows mercilessly, murdering and raping in pursuit of his lust to possess everything. When Jar returns, Mew--who is desperately afraid of Jar, though he does not know why--tries to destroy him, but is literally hoist by his own petard. Mockery Gap features a more kindly Christ-figure in the mute fisherman whose presence briefly illuminates the lives of those who are capable of love and tenderness. Their consequent victories are, however, small and hard-won; Powys was never able to muster any real confidence in the power of love to overcome the implacable forces of hatred, lust and greed.
In Mr. Weston's Good Wine a more fatherly God comes to the village of Folly Down in the form of a wine-salesman concerned to settle a few outstanding accounts, as reckoned by his faithful assistant Michael. Mr. Weston deals in two kinds of wine, one light and exhilarating, the other dark and deadly; in Powys' view, both are holy gifts and the latter is more devoutly to be desired by virtue of its reliability and its finality. The dark wine is not death in general but a specific sort of merciful death, which is contrasted with the more brutal deaths unceremoniously meted out the wicked. It is, however, far from clear exactly how the death of the wicked is worse than the death of the good, given that the devil is here only a roaring lion employed by Mr. Weston to throw a scare into people. The upshot of Mr. Weston's visit is that much evil is wiped out and some virtue rewarded, but the problematic weighing of good and evil is further confused by the dubiousness of the rewards that virtue achieves.
Fables is a series of surreal dialogues, some of them between men and agents of nature, others featuring nonhuman creatures and inanimate objects. "Darkness and Nathaniel" is yet another of the many stories in which Powys sings the praises of merciful death. A projected second volume never materialized, although a few items of this kind are scattered through Powys's other collections, along with some other supernatural stories. "Christ in the Cupboard" in The White Paternoster is an effective tale in which Jesus visits a virtuous family only to be put away when his charity imperils their wealth; when they finally have need of him he has metamorphosed into the devil.
The Key of the Field and The Only Penitent are fine allegorical novelettes, both of which were reprinted in the collection Bottle's Path and again in God's Eyes a-Twinkle. In the former Jar is a squire who lets a field to a good man; he is dispossessed of it by greedy neighbours but is ultimately saved from wretchedness when Jar lets him into his beautiful garden. In the latter a vicar opens a confessional which no one visits until Jar turns up to admit that he is responsible for "every terror in the earth," his only claim to absolution being that he also invented death. This message is extensively amplified in Unclay, which some critics consider to be Powys's masterpiece, although Mr. Weston's Good Wine is far better known. Death is here personified not as a scythe-wielding ancient but as a personable young man named John, who mislays the warrant instructing him to gather in certain souls, and must then observe the suffering which those he has been commanded to release undergo while he searches for it. The sadistic Farmer Mere, who buys the innocent Susie from her miserly father John Dawe in order that he may despoil her, is the most monstrous of all the villains featured in Powys's novels; some contemporary critics considered his fascination with such characters unhealthy.
In Powys's last long fantasy, the novella The Two Thieves, George Douse steals four bottles from the devil containing Greed, Pride, Anger and Cruelty. These liquors permit him to grow rich and powerful, but the devil warns him to beware on another thief, Jar--here called "Tinker Jar"--who might yet take back the gifts and their produce. As in Unclay, the climactic triumph of morality is rousing, but by no means consolatory. Powys seems to have found it an adequate conclusion, though, for he wrote virtually nothing more during the last 20 years of his life. Oddly enough, the most upbeat of all his allegories, "Come and Dine"--which features Mr. Weston in an uncommonly generous mood--was only published posthumously. A few minor stories featuring Mr. Jar also remained long unpublished, including "The Scapegoat" and "No Wine."
T. F. Powys was possessed by a peculiar kind of angst which he understood not as a fear of death but rather as an agony of self-loathing which no honest and moral man could escape except by death. Death, in his eyes, was good and merciful because it led to oblivion, and the only kind of happiness achievable on earth was a kind of blind drunkenness incapable of being long sustained. Few readers are able to identify wholeheartedly with the fantasies which rework this world-view in allegorical form, but it is not beyond the reach of understanding and the very horror of it lends a powerful impetus to the author's artistry. He remains the most impressive Christian fantasist of modern times.
Source Citation: <> Stableford, Brian,
"T. F. Powys: Overview" in St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle, St. James Press, 1996.
DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale, 2003.
Reproduced in Student Resource Center.
Detroit: Gale, 2004.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC
Document Number: CD2101210939
___________________
Here his wife and two sons are in the 1911 census, with her reported to have had 2 children, both of whom were then alive, and with them:
Name Relation Condition/Yrs married Sex Age Birth Year Occupation Where Born
POWYS, Theodore F Head Married M 35 1876 Private Means Derbyshire Shirley
POWYS, Violet Wife Married 5 years F 24 1887 Dorset, Dorchester
POWYS, Theodore Son M 4 1907 Dorset, Chaldon
POWYS, Francis Son M 2 1909 Dorset, Chaldon
RG number: RG14 Piece: 12331
Reference: RG14PN12331 RG78PN700 RD262 SD4 ED9 SN19
Registration District: Wareham Sub District: Bere Regis
Enumeration District: 9 Parish: Chaldon Herring
Address: East Chaldon Dorchester
County: Dorsetshire
Was the first son later renamed to Charles?
___________________
His burial (Somerset & Dorset FHS):
First name(s): Theodore Francis
Last name: POWYS
Date of burial: 1 Dec 1953
Age at death: 77
Calculated year of birth: 1876
Place of burial: Mappowder
Dedication: St Peter & St Paul
County: Dorset
___________________
_________________________________________________________
Here's a literary bio:
T. F. Powys: Overview
Critic: Brian Stableford
Source: "T. F. Powys: Overview" in St. James Guide
to Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle, St. James
Press, 1996.
Author Covered: T(heodore) F(rancis) Powys (1875-1953), also known as T. F(rancis) Powys, Theodore Francis Powys
Like his elder brother John, Theodore Powys found his father's orthodox theology difficult to reconcile with his experience of the world and of his own inner self, and like John he used fantastic fiction as a means of exploring alternatives. His quest was not as far-ranging; he was able to bring it to a conclusion much sooner and it did not take him into such exotic territory. Indeed, Theodore's fantasies, which are all set in a chain of tiny villages surrounding a hill in Dorset, seem positively claustrophobic by comparison with John's; whereas John eventually journeyed to the limits of the cosmos in search of deities appropriate to his moral philosophy, Theodore simply imported them into his own back yard. The idiosyncratic world-view which informed this process is laid out in Theodore's Soliloquies of a Hermit, which represents emotions like the black despair which periodically possessed him as supernatural forces--"the moods of God"--and imagines Christ (as an idea if not an actual presence) as a force appointed to interrupt and ameliorate these moods.
T. F. Powys's longer fantasies are painstakingly constructed allegories which feature a series of symbolic characters representing God and his agents. The most frequently deployed of these characters, first featured in the novella "The Left Leg," is Mr. Jar (Jehovah). Jar has long been absent from the village in which "The Left Leg" is set, leaving the vile Farmer Mew to exploit his fellows mercilessly, murdering and raping in pursuit of his lust to possess everything. When Jar returns, Mew--who is desperately afraid of Jar, though he does not know why--tries to destroy him, but is literally hoist by his own petard. Mockery Gap features a more kindly Christ-figure in the mute fisherman whose presence briefly illuminates the lives of those who are capable of love and tenderness. Their consequent victories are, however, small and hard-won; Powys was never able to muster any real confidence in the power of love to overcome the implacable forces of hatred, lust and greed.
In Mr. Weston's Good Wine a more fatherly God comes to the village of Folly Down in the form of a wine-salesman concerned to settle a few outstanding accounts, as reckoned by his faithful assistant Michael. Mr. Weston deals in two kinds of wine, one light and exhilarating, the other dark and deadly; in Powys' view, both are holy gifts and the latter is more devoutly to be desired by virtue of its reliability and its finality. The dark wine is not death in general but a specific sort of merciful death, which is contrasted with the more brutal deaths unceremoniously meted out the wicked. It is, however, far from clear exactly how the death of the wicked is worse than the death of the good, given that the devil is here only a roaring lion employed by Mr. Weston to throw a scare into people. The upshot of Mr. Weston's visit is that much evil is wiped out and some virtue rewarded, but the problematic weighing of good and evil is further confused by the dubiousness of the rewards that virtue achieves.
Fables is a series of surreal dialogues, some of them between men and agents of nature, others featuring nonhuman creatures and inanimate objects. "Darkness and Nathaniel" is yet another of the many stories in which Powys sings the praises of merciful death. A projected second volume never materialized, although a few items of this kind are scattered through Powys's other collections, along with some other supernatural stories. "Christ in the Cupboard" in The White Paternoster is an effective tale in which Jesus visits a virtuous family only to be put away when his charity imperils their wealth; when they finally have need of him he has metamorphosed into the devil.
The Key of the Field and The Only Penitent are fine allegorical novelettes, both of which were reprinted in the collection Bottle's Path and again in God's Eyes a-Twinkle. In the former Jar is a squire who lets a field to a good man; he is dispossessed of it by greedy neighbours but is ultimately saved from wretchedness when Jar lets him into his beautiful garden. In the latter a vicar opens a confessional which no one visits until Jar turns up to admit that he is responsible for "every terror in the earth," his only claim to absolution being that he also invented death. This message is extensively amplified in Unclay, which some critics consider to be Powys's masterpiece, although Mr. Weston's Good Wine is far better known. Death is here personified not as a scythe-wielding ancient but as a personable young man named John, who mislays the warrant instructing him to gather in certain souls, and must then observe the suffering which those he has been commanded to release undergo while he searches for it. The sadistic Farmer Mere, who buys the innocent Susie from her miserly father John Dawe in order that he may despoil her, is the most monstrous of all the villains featured in Powys's novels; some contemporary critics considered his fascination with such characters unhealthy.
In Powys's last long fantasy, the novella The Two Thieves, George Douse steals four bottles from the devil containing Greed, Pride, Anger and Cruelty. These liquors permit him to grow rich and powerful, but the devil warns him to beware on another thief, Jar--here called "Tinker Jar"--who might yet take back the gifts and their produce. As in Unclay, the climactic triumph of morality is rousing, but by no means consolatory. Powys seems to have found it an adequate conclusion, though, for he wrote virtually nothing more during the last 20 years of his life. Oddly enough, the most upbeat of all his allegories, "Come and Dine"--which features Mr. Weston in an uncommonly generous mood--was only published posthumously. A few minor stories featuring Mr. Jar also remained long unpublished, including "The Scapegoat" and "No Wine."
T. F. Powys was possessed by a peculiar kind of angst which he understood not as a fear of death but rather as an agony of self-loathing which no honest and moral man could escape except by death. Death, in his eyes, was good and merciful because it led to oblivion, and the only kind of happiness achievable on earth was a kind of blind drunkenness incapable of being long sustained. Few readers are able to identify wholeheartedly with the fantasies which rework this world-view in allegorical form, but it is not beyond the reach of understanding and the very horror of it lends a powerful impetus to the author's artistry. He remains the most impressive Christian fantasist of modern times.
Source Citation: <> Stableford, Brian,
"T. F. Powys: Overview" in St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle, St. James Press, 1996.
DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale, 2003.
Reproduced in Student Resource Center.
Detroit: Gale, 2004.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC
Document Number: CD2101210939
___________________
Here his wife and two sons are in the 1911 census, with her reported to have had 2 children, both of whom were then alive, and with them:
Name Relation Condition/Yrs married Sex Age Birth Year Occupation Where Born
POWYS, Theodore F Head Married M 35 1876 Private Means Derbyshire Shirley
POWYS, Violet Wife Married 5 years F 24 1887 Dorset, Dorchester
POWYS, Theodore Son M 4 1907 Dorset, Chaldon
POWYS, Francis Son M 2 1909 Dorset, Chaldon
RG number: RG14 Piece: 12331
Reference: RG14PN12331 RG78PN700 RD262 SD4 ED9 SN19
Registration District: Wareham Sub District: Bere Regis
Enumeration District: 9 Parish: Chaldon Herring
Address: East Chaldon Dorchester
County: Dorsetshire
Was the first son later renamed to Charles?
___________________
His burial (Somerset & Dorset FHS):
First name(s): Theodore Francis
Last name: POWYS
Date of burial: 1 Dec 1953
Age at death: 77
Calculated year of birth: 1876
Place of burial: Mappowder
Dedication: St Peter & St Paul
County: Dorset
___________________