Periodically, over almost 50 years, starting with Confessions of Two Brothers in 1916, Powys wrote works that present his personal philosophy of life. These are not works of philosophy in the academic sense; in a bookstore the appropriate section might be self-help. Powys describes A Philosophy of Solitude (1933) as a "short textbook of the various mental tricks by which the human soul can obtain […] comparative happiness beneath the normal burden of human fate".John Cowper Powys, "Introduction to the English edition", A Philosophy of Solitude. London: Jonathan Cape, 1933, p. 7. Powys's various works of popular philosophy may seem mere potboilers, written to help his finances as he worked on his novels, but critics like Denis Lane, Harald Fawkner and Janina Nordius see in them insight into "the intellectual structures that form the metastructures of the great novels".Harald Fawkner quoted by Janina Nordius, '"I Am Myself Alone",' p. 16. Denis Lane often quotes from Powys's non-fiction in his "Introduction" to In the Spirit of Powys: New Essays. These works were frequently bestsellers, especially in the United States. The Meaning of Culture (1929) went through 20 editions in Powys's lifetime.Anthony Head, p. 7. In Defence of Sensuality, published at the end of the following year, was yet another bestseller, as was A Philosophy of Solitude (1933).
