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
politics Valentine Ackland
VA and Warner joined the Communist Party , believing, like many of their contemporaries, that Communism offered the best or only defence against encroaching Fascism.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
55
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Introduction”. Letters: Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited by William Maxwell, Chatto and Windus, p. vii - xvii.
xiv
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
Author summary Valentine Ackland
VA published very little in her lifetime, and has gone largely unrecognised since. Her lifelong partner, Sylvia Townsend Warner , was very supportive of Ackland and helped her to get her writing into print. This...
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
Publishing Valentine Ackland
A substantial collection of VA 's poems, edited by Sylvia Townsend Warner , was published posthumously as The Nature of the Moment.
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
307
Residence Valentine Ackland
VA and Sylvia Townsend Warner lived in Miss Green's cottage at Chaldon Herring.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
35
Residence Valentine Ackland
In 1937, Ackland and Warner moved to Lower Frome Vauchurch on the river Frome, near Maiden Newton, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
40-3
Early in the Second World War, from...
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 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 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...
Textual Production Amabel Williams-Ellis
Contributors included Nancy Cunard , Winifred Holtby , Storm Jameson , Pamela Hansford Johnson , Naomi Mitchison , Sylvia Townsend Warner , W. H. Auden , John Lehmann , and John Strachey .
Textual Production W. B. Yeats
WBY published The Oxford Book of Modern Verse: 1892-1935. His idiosyncratic selection included Alice Meynell , Ezra Pound , Edith Sitwell , Rabindranath Tagore , Sylvia Townsend Warner , and his friend Dorothy Wellesley .
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
280n27
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Textual Production Valentine Ackland
From the mid-1930s until the mid-1940s, Ackland published many of her early poems in the New Republic, New Masses, and The New Yorker. At that time Edmund Wilson , among others, appreciated...

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.