Anthony Powell
1905-2000
Birthplace: Westminster, London
Typewriter: Olympia SM 9*

The English author Anthony Dymoke Powell was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford where he met several other young writers including Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Prior to World War II he worked in publishing and as a film-script writer, before becoming a full-time novelist and literary critic.

Powell is probably best known for his twelve-volume novel A Dance to the Music of Time (usually just referred to as “Dance”). He wrote a number of other novels and a biography of the seventeenth-century diarist John Aubrey. In addition Powell was also a prolific literary critic and book reviewer for a number of periodicals including the Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement, Punch and the Spectator. He also published four volumes of memoirs, three volumes of diaries and two volumes of his selected literary criticism. He was married to the author Lady Violet Pakenham. Powell died on 28 March 2000 at his Somerset home.

Trivia: Powell always composed straight onto a typewriter so there are no manuscripts of his works. The typescripts have ink and pencil corrections, which show the author honing and developing his distinctive style with extensive additions, deletions and changes.