Anthony Dymoke Powell was born on 21 December 1905. His parents, the army infantry officer (and later colonel) Philip Lionel Powell, and his mother, Maud Wells-Dymoke, led a reasonably privileged upper-middle-class life that enabled them to send young Anthony to Eton (1919-1923), followed by three years at Balliol College, Oxford, where Powell read History but left with a rather uninspiring third-class degree. During his time both at Eton and later at Oxford, Powell had forged many friendships and contacts, particularly in the literary world, that proved valuable in his later profession. He started work for the publisher Duckworth in 1926. He counted influential writers such as Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Cyril Connolly and Henry Green among his friends.

Powell’s writing career started

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Citation: Berberich, Christine. "Anthony Powell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3620, accessed 29 March 2024.]

3620 Anthony Powell 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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