Rob Stepney’s republication of a classic historical novel was accompanied by some remarkable coincidences
Shakespeare, in Henry IV part I, has the Welsh rebel chieftain Owain Glyndŵr describe himself as ‘not in the roll of common men’. ‘At my nativity, the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,’ he claims. His supernatural powers seemed confirmed by the appearance in 1402 of a great comet in the northern skies, which rallied the men of Gwynedd to Glyndŵr’s insurrection against English rule.
John Cowper Powys, whose grand historical novel Owen Glendower chronicles these events, also had a reputation as a magus. Living for a while in North Wales, I re-read his novel, which had long been out of print, and decided in early 1997 to republish it. When I looked to the northern skies, there was again a comet: Hale-Bopp at its fiery brightest, contributing to my conviction that this was the time to bring Owen Glendower back into the world of available books.
When I had first discussed the idea with a leading light in the Powys Society, I had been told, in effect, ‘if you get involved with John Cowper, don’t be surprised if surprising things happen.’ And so it proved.
A second remarkable coincidence occurred a year or so later, during a holiday in Dolwyddelan. By that time, I had with me the page proofs of what was to become the Walcot edition of Owen Glendower. But I was not entirely happy with the text. The book had first been published in New York in 1941 and had had little editing, and certainly none by anyone familiar with the many Welsh words and phrases Cowper Powys included.
Dyffryn (valley) was sometimes misspelt with one f; and llyn (lake) with one l. And I was particularly concerned about possible inaccuracies in quotations taken from the collection of Welsh myths known as the Mabinogion. One was the saying a vo pen bit pont: ‘he who is chief shall be the bridge’.
So I asked in the village if there might be someone prepared to help check them.
I was directed to a house high on the hillside. A man answered the door. Somewhat apologetically, and clutching the page proofs, I explained my interest in Cowper Powys. Did the man by any chance know of the author?
‘Know John Cowper?’ he said. ‘He was our next-door neighbour in Blaenau Ffestiniog.’ I was invited in. When it came to checking passages from the Mabinogion, my host, Llewelyn, pulled a book from the shelf.
It was not just any copy of the Mabinogion; it was John Cowper’s own copy. It had been given to Llewelyn by Phyllis Playter, Cowper Powys’ partner of 40 years, shortly after his death. There were Powys scholars who would have given their eye teeth for it, but this iconic volume had been passed to a friend and neighbour.
By the time the revised Owen Glendower was ready for printing, I was living in the small Oxfordshire town of Charlbury. Among its three thousand residents was the actor Freddie Jones, and he just happened to have played the parts of both Glendower and John Cowper Powys in a recent television programme.
After Margaret Drabble, writing in The Guardian, described Rob’s 2002 edition of Owen Glendower as a ‘heroic act of publishing’, the print run quickly sold out. The Walcot edition of Owen Glendower was bought on disc by Overlook Press, and the rights to publication returned once again to New York.
This is an updated version of an article which (oops, incorrectly in that form) appeared in Northern Earth 181.