A Glastonbury Romance is generally esteemed the greatest of John Cowper Powys's six major novels, the other five being Wolf Solent, Weymouth Sands, Maiden Castle, Owen Glendower and Porius. On its original publication in 1932, the late J. D. Beresford wrote, "I believe that A Glastonbury Romance is one of the greatest novels in the world, to be classed with Tolstoy's War and Peace." C. S. Forester regarded it as "one of the most significant and notable books of the century," Hugh Walpole thought that, "with the single exception of Thomas Hardy, no English novelist of the last thirty years has evoked the very stuff of the English ground with the power and the poetry which Mr. Powys has at command," and Sir Gerald Barry summed it up as "really a tremendous boo. It makes the competent little novels that week by week are hailed as 'masterpieces' look silly. In searching for comparisons, one finds oneself using such names as Hardy or Hamsun....In breadth, rhythm, and intensity A Glastonbury Romance has something of the mighty pantheism of Rubens."