Powell, Anthony

▪ British author

in full  Anthony Dymoke Powell  

born December 21, 1905, London, England

died March 28, 2000, near Frome, Somerset

      English novelist, best known for his autobiographical and satiric 12-volume series of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time.

      As a child, Powell lived wherever his father, a regular officer in the Welsh Regiment, was stationed. He attended Eton College from 1919 to 1923 and Balliol College, Oxford, from 1923 to 1926. Thereafter he joined the London publishing house of Duckworth, which published his first novel, Afternoon Men (1931). The book was followed by four more novels on prewar society, including Venusburg (1932) and From a View to a Death (1933).

      Powell left publishing for journalism in 1936, writing for the Daily Telegraph for nearly 50 years. After serving in World War II, he wrote a biographical study of the 17th-century author John Aubrey and His Friends (1948).

      In 1951 he published A Question of Upbringing, the first part of his ambitious 12-part cycle of novels. The series' first-person narrative reflects Powell's own outlook and experiences; he observes and describes English upper- and middle-class society in the decades before and after World War II with wit and insight, using a subtle, low-key style. The 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time series ended with the publication of Hearing Secret Harmonies in 1975 and is considered a significant achievement of 20th-century English fiction. Powell afterward continued to write novels and also four volumes of memoirs, collected as To Keep the Ball Rolling (1983).

* * *