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Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (December 6, 1893 - May 1, 1978) was an English novelist and poet.
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Life
Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora (Nora) Hudleston. Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honour, after his death in 1916. As a child, Sylvia seemingly enjoyed an idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire, but was strongly affected by her father's death.
She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920's. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes.
In 1926, she met Valentine Ackland, a young woman poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969.
Work
Early in her career she researched 15th and 16th century music, and spent ten years as one of the editors of the substantial Tudor Church Music. In 1934 she published along with Ackland a volume of verse called Whether a Dove or a Seagull.
Her novels were Lolly Willowes (1926), The True Heart, Summer Will Show (1936), The Corner That Held Them (1948), Mr Fortune's Maggot, The Flint Anchor (1954) and After The Death of Don Juan. These novels are remarkable in that each is so different from the other.
She also wrote many short stories, including the collections A Moral Ending and Other Stories, The Salutation, More Joy in Heaven, The Cat's Cradle Book, A Garland of Straw, The Museum of Cheats. Winter in the Air, A Spirit Rises, A Stranger with a Bag, The Innocent and the Guilty, One Thing Leading to Another and a sequence set in the supernatural Kingdoms of Elfin, and also a well-received biography of the novelist T.H. White, which The New York Times declared "a small masterpiece which may well be read long after the writings of its subject have been forgotten."[1] In addition, she wrote an autobiography entitled Scenes of Childhood and a translation of Contre Saint-Beuve by Marcel Proust, and published letters and diaries.
In the 1970s she became known as a significant writer of feminist or lesbian sentiment, and her novels were among the earlier ones to be revived by Virago Press. Selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland were edited by Susanna Pinney and published in 1998 under the title Jealousy in Connecticut.
External links
- The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
- The Sylvia Townsend Warner Archive, Dorset County Museum, UK
- Review of An Affair to Remember, New York Times, March 7, 1999
References
- I'll Stand By You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner.Edited by Susanna Pinney. North Pomfret, Vt.: Pimlico/Trafalgar Square.
- ^ Allen, Walter. "Lucky In Art Unlucky In Life" (fee required), The New York Times, 1968-04-21. Retrieved on 2008-02-10.
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