John Cowper Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, 8 October 1872, the son of Charles Francis Powys and Mary Cowper Johnson. He was educated at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He married Margaret Alice Lyon in 1896 (died 1947), with whom he had one son.

He was a teacher and a lecturer, touring Britain, Europe and the United States. He settled in the United States, 1904-34, making his home with his companion, Phyllis Plater, near Albany in upstate New York, 1930-4. He became a full-time writer and returned to Britain in 1934, living in Blaenau Festiniog, North Wales, 1935-63. He made his name as a poet and essayist and later produced novels and some works of philosophy. He died on 17 June 1963.

His publications include: "Poems" (1899); "Wood and Stone" (1915); "Visions and Revisions" (1915); "Rodmoor" (1916); "Wolf's-Bane. Rhymes" (1916); "Suspended Judgements" (1916); (with Llewelyn Powys) "Confessions of Two Brothers" (1916); "Mandragora" (1917); "The Complex Vision" (1920); "Samphire" (1922); "Psychoanalysis and Morality" (1923); "The Religion of a Sceptic" (1925); "Ducdame" (1925); "Wolf Solent" (1929); "The Meaning of Culture" (1929); "In Defence of Sensuality" (1930); "Dorothy M. Richardson" (1931); "A Glastonbury Romance" (1933); "A Philosophy of Solitude" (1933); "John Cowper Powys: Autobiography" (1934); "Weymouth Sands" (1934) published in Britain as "Jobber Skald" (1935); "The Art of Happiness" (1935); "Maiden Castle" (1936); "Morwyn" (1937); "The Pleasures of Literature" (1938); "Owen Glendower" (1940); "Mortal Strife" (1941); "The Art of Growing Old" (1943); "Dostoievsky" (1946); "Rabelais" (1947); "Porius" (1951); "The Inmates" (1952); "In Spite Of" (1953); "Atlantis" (1954); "The Brazen Head" (1956); "Lucifer: a Narrative Poem" (1956); "Up and Out" (1957); "Letters to L. U. Wilkinson" (1957); "Homer and Æther" (1959); and "All or Nothing" (1960).