John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) belongs to a literary family, though literature, unlike music, does not run in families. But there are some exceptions in English, among the English exceptions to this general rule, the Bronte' sisters and the Powys brothers . No study of John Cowper Powys, Theoder, or Llewelyn can afford to disregard the family to which they belonged. The three brothers stand in varying degrees a part from the literary world of their time; and this detachment can to some extent be accounted for in the intense feeling which linked them each other and gave them the sense of belonging to a self-sufficient world.