 First edition (US) | |
| Author | John Cowper Powys |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Bildungsroman |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, New York |
Publication date | 1929 |
| Publication place | England |
| Preceded by | Ducdame (1925) |
| Followed by | A Glastonbury Romance (1932) |
Wolf Solent is a novel by John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) that was written while he was based in Patchin Place, New York City, and travelling around the US as a lecturer.[1] It was published by Simon and Schuster in May 1929 in New York. The British edition, published by Jonathan Cape, appeared in July 1929. This, Powys's fourth novel, was his first literary success. It is a bildungsroman in which the eponymous protagonist, a thirty-five-year-old history teacher, returns to his birthplace, where he discovers the inadequacy of his dualistic philosophy. Wolf resembles John Cowper Powys in that an elemental philosophy is at the centre of his life and, because, like Powys, he hates science and modern inventions like cars and planes, and is attracted to slender, androgynous women. Wolf Solent is the first of Powys's four Wessex novels. Powys both wrote about the same region as Thomas Hardy and was a twentieth-century successor to the great nineteenth-century novelist.
The novel is set in the fictional towns of Ramsgard, Dorset, based on Sherborne, Dorset, where Powys attended school from May 1883, Blacksod, modelled on Yeovil, Somerset, and Kings Barton, modelled on Bradford Abbas, Dorset. It has references to other places in Dorset like Dorchester and Weymouth that were also full of memories for Powys.[2]