Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Standard Name: Warner, Sylvia Townsend
Birth Name: Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner
STW once commented that her career in writing was an accidental one, as her initial career was in musicology. However, she was very prolific for more than fifty years of the twentieth century over a considerable range of genres, including poetry, fourteen volumes of short stories, journal articles, radio plays, seven novels, biographies, and translations. Her letters and diaries have been published as well. Her fiction often explores supernatural themes and the twists of human psychology. She has been particularly praised for her short stories about middle-class characters, mainly women: for acute observation, clarity, precision, simplicity, and originality of language and of imagery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary Setting Valentine Ackland
The book extended ideas covered in her articles for the Left Review.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and Valentine Ackland. I’ll Stand By You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. Editor Pinney, Susanna, Pimlico.
141n1
The text's downtrodden family was based on tenants living at East Chaldon with Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner . Ackland added...
politics Valentine Ackland
VA voted Liberal (against Harold Wilson 's Labour government) in the general election, a departure from socialism which pained Warner considerably.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
235
Textual Production Valentine Ackland
VA experienced a spiritual crisis of total despair on 8 October 1947, and decided, at that moment, to stop drinking. This event was the beginning point for her autobiography. Warner , privy to Ackland's diaries...
Dedications Valentine Ackland
VA , with Sylvia Townsend Warner , published Whether a Dove or Seagull, a collection of love poems.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Editorial Materials”. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Collected Poems, edited by Claire Harman, Carcanet New Press, pp. xi - xxiii; 275.
xix-xx
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
131
Textual Features Valentine Ackland
The work portrayed her new spiritual awareness that she had in the past been selfish, destructive, and insensitive to others, and her feelings of worthlessness and wastefulness. It also detailed her remorse and conflicted feelings...
Textual Production Valentine Ackland
VA finished writing her painful confessional memoir, For Sylvia: An Honest Account, and gave it to her lifelong partner, Sylvia Townsend Warner .
Ackland, Valentine. For Sylvia: An Honest Account. Chatto and Windus.
29
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
226
Textual Production Valentine Ackland
Not until 1998 were any of VA 's letters published. In that year about a third of the huge correspondence exchanged between her and her longtime lover was published as I'll Stand By You: Selected...
Publishing Valentine Ackland
For Sylvia: An Honest Account, VA 's confessional memoir, was finally published by Chatto and Windus , after the deaths of both Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner , with a foreword by Bea Howe .
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
226
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Publishing Valentine Ackland
Twenty-Eight Poems, a small collection of VA 's poems, was prepared and privately printed by Sylvia Townsend Warner .
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
267
Publishing Valentine Ackland
The year after VA 's death, a booklet of her poems, titled Later Poems, was privately printed by Sylvia Townsend Warner as a keepsake for friends .
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
307
Literary responses Mary Butts
Although her work received mixed reviews, MB was generally recognized as an important if eccentric literary figure during her lifetime, and she was highly praised by other modernist writers, including Ezra Pound , Marianne Moore
Textual Features Nancy Cunard
The nineteen women poets represented (not a bad proportion among seventy) are, besides Cunard and Mackworth, Sylvia Townsend Warner (by three poems) and Valentine Ackland , Mollie Charteris Craven , Wilma Cawdor , V. C. Grant
Textual Production Q. D. Leavis
In her essays, reviews, introductions, and lectures, QDL also developed varied critiques of such authors as Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot , Charlotte Yonge , Marie Corelli , Edith Wharton , Naomi Mitchison , Amabel Williams-Ellis
Textual Features Shena Mackay
The stories here deal with all kinds of complexity and nuance in the sisterly relationship. The collection ends, as the introduction begins, with Christina Rossetti 's Goblin Market. The nineteenth century is further represented...
Literary responses Naomi Royde-Smith
Askwith (herself a published writer) defended NRS in the columns of The Times soon after the latter's death. She ranked The Delicate Situation as a novel likely to survive, and likened it to other works...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Rainbow. Alfred Knopf, 1932.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Scenes of Childhood, and Other Stories. Chatto and Windus, 1981.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Sketches From Nature. Clare, Son and Company, 1963.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Some World Far From Ours; and, ’Stay, Corydon, Thou Swain’. E. Mathews and Marrot, 1929.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Somerset. Paul Elek, 1949.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Summer Will Show. Chatto and Windus, 1936.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and David Garnett. Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters. Editor Garnett, Richard, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Collected Poems. Editor Harman, Claire, Carcanet New Press, 1982.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Selected Poems. Carcanet Press, 1985.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. T. H. White: A Biography. Jonathan Cape with Chatto and Windus, 1967.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Cat’s Cradle Book. Viking, 1940.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Corner That Held Them. Chatto and Windus, 1948.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner. Editor Harman, Claire, Chatto and Windus, 1994.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Espalier. Chatto and Windus, 1925.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Flint Anchor. Chatto and Windus, 1954.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Innocent and the Guilty: Stories. Chatto and Windus, 1971.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Kingdoms of Elfin. Chatto and Windus, 1977.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Maze. Fleuron, 1928.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Museum of Cheats, and Other Stories. Chatto and Windus, 1947.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “The People Have No Generals”. Our Time, Vol.
1
, No. 1, Newport Publications.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The Salutation. Chatto and Windus, 1932.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. The True Heart. Chatto and Windus, 1929.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. This Our Brother. Lanston Monotype Corporation, 1930.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Time Importuned. Chatto and Windus, 1928.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and Sir Peter Pears. Twelve Poems. Chatto and Windus, 1980.