Sylvia Townsend Warner
Our author of the month for August this year is the English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, who during her long life published seven novels, 19 collections of short stories, several collections of poetry and numerous essays, as well as scholarly works on musicology and a short biography of the novelist T.H. White. It is an astonishing body of work, encompassing radical politics, feminism, ambiguous sexuality and much else besides, but despite a recent revival of interest in her, remains severely underappreciated.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, introduction by Sarah Waters
From the publisher:
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s first novel, published in 1926, is magical and subversive, anticipating the ficton of writers like Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, introduction by Claire Harman
Gayle recommends:
Pick up any Sylvia Townsend Warner book and you're in for a treat, but Summer Will Show is a particular favourite. It follows young English aristocrat Sophia Willoughby as she ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner, volume editor Claire Harman
Denis Donoghue writes:
One of Donald Davie’s early poems, and one of his strongest, is
‘Pushkin: A Didactic Poem’, from Brides of Reason (1955). As in
Davie’s ‘Dream Forest’, Pushkin ...
Sylvia Townsend Warner, introduction by Philip Hensher
From the publisher:
A masterful historical novel of monastic life, set in the 14th century. Many consider this Townsend Warner’s most accomplished work.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, introduction by Wendy Mulford
From the publisher:
Published in 1938, mirroring the author’s concern with the background to the Spanish Civil War, this novel mixes legend and history, in tracing the disappearance of Don Juan.
From the publisher:
This title collects 20 of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s short stories, most of them from the years at “The New Yorker”. They span a full half-century, from 1929 to 1977 and ...
From the publisher:
In the course of her brilliant career Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote superbly in many and diverse forms but never penned a memoir, properly speaking.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, introduction by Adam Mars-Jones
From the publisher:
Sukey Bond, on graduating from a late Victorian orphanage, is sent to work as a maid on a farm on the Essex Coast. After she falls in love with her mistresses son, Eric, she ...
From the publisher:
A collection of stories that includes “Love Match”.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited by Claire Harman
From the publisher:
The first “Collected Poems” of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) was published by Carcanet in 1982. Since then, more of her work has come to light, including some of the ...
From the publisher:
John Barnard, leading merchant at a Norfolk port, is a pillar of nineteenth-century rectitude. Though stern and aloof with his indolent, tippling wife and watchful children, ...
From the publisher:
‘One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers’ – Hermione Lee
From the publisher:
Comprises eighteen short stores written between 1938 and 1955 that includes: “Winter in the Air, Hee-Haw!”; “The Children’s Grandmother”; “Evan”; “A Priestess ...
