Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Valentine Ackland
-
Standard Name: Ackland, Valentine
Birth Name: Ackland, Mary Kathleen McCrory
Pseudonym: Valentine Ackland
Married Name: Mary Kathleen McCrory Turpin
Nickname: Molly
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 writing (which dates from four decades of the mid twentieth century) took the form of poetry, as well as political critique, an autobiography, and letters. VA
contributed articles regularly to magazines such as Country Standard, Left Review, and The Countryman, none of which paid very well. At present she is better known for her association with Warner than for anything she wrote herself.
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
Although she had a long-lasting love-affair with a man (musicologist Percy Buck
) and shared affectionate, long-term, non-sexual relationships with men (for example with David Garnett
), her thirty-nine-year lesbian relationship with Valentine Ackland
(which...
Dedications
Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW
and Valentine Ackland
published Whether a Dove or Seagull, a poetry volume dedicated to Robert Frost
; they concealed the precise part written by each.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Editorial Materials”. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Collected Poems, edited by Claire Harman, Carcanet New Press, 1982, pp. xi - xxiii; 275.
xix-xx
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
131-2
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Townsend Warner
On 12 January 1931, Warner and Ackland
committed themselves to each other in a marriage, and after this they lived together for the rest of their joint lives. Warner remained faithful to Ackland, despite...
Family and Intimate relationships
Julia Constance Fletcher
JCF's uncle Solomon Caesar Malan
was an orientalist scholar, master of a dozen languages including Tibetan. He married an Englishwoman and became anglicized: a graduate of Oxford University
(to which he left his remarkable library)...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW
and Valentine Ackland
began a lesbian relationship shortly after they met at Chaldon in Dorset; it lasted until Ackland died in 1969.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and David Garnett. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters, edited by Richard Garnett, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. various pages.
viii, 48
Ackland, Valentine. For Sylvia: An Honest Account. Chatto and Windus, 1985.
122-5
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora, 1988.
33-4
Baldwin, Dean, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 139. Gale Research, 1994.
139: 304
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW
and Valentine Ackland
celebrated the thirty-seventh anniversary of their marriage, shortly before Ackland was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1989.
289-90
Friends, Associates
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Among the many literary figures personally known to STW
were Theodore Francis Powys
and his wife Violet
(the friends who introduced her to the poet Valentine Ackland
) and novelist Nancy Cunard
.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Introduction”. Letters: Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited by William, 1908 - 2000 Maxwell, Chatto and Windus, 1982, p. vii - xvii.
xiii-xiv
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and David Garnett. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters, edited by Richard Garnett, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. various pages.
2
politics
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Responding to an article written by Nancy Cunard
in the Daily Worker and the News Chronicle, STW
and Valentine Ackland
travelled to Barcelona as first-aid volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.
The year after their Spanish Civil War involvement, STW
and Ackland
moved to a different Dorset village: Lower Frome Vauchurch on the river Frome, below Maiden Newton, where they lived for the rest...
Textual Features
Nancy Cunard
Making their first appearance in print are poems written for Valentine Ackland
and for Nina Hamnett
, and NC
's elegy for Eliot
, written a few weeks after his death and only two months...
Twenty years after Warner's death, Susanna Pinney
edited and published I'll Stand by You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner
and Valentine Ackland, with frame narrative by Warner.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
The letters provide a detailed account of the thirty-nine-year love affair between STW
and Ackland
. The pair wrote letters to each other whether they were apart or together, and the result is an intimate...
18 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans...
National or international item
18 July 1936
The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco
.
Bruno, Leonard. On the Move: A Chronology of Advances in Transportation. Gale Research, 1993.
228
Texts
Ackland, Valentine. Country Conditions. Lawrence and Wishart, 1936.
Ackland, Valentine. “Country Dealings”. Left Review.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and Valentine Ackland. “Editor’s Note”. I’ll Stand By You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, edited by Susanna Pinney, Pimlico, 1998, p. vii - viii.
Ackland, Valentine. For Sylvia: An Honest Account. Chatto and Windus, 1985.
Howe, Bea, and Valentine Ackland. “Foreword”. For Sylvia: An Honest Account, Chatto and Windus, 1985, pp. 5-24.
Ackland, Valentine. Further Poems of Valentine Ackland. Welmont Publishing, 1978.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and Valentine Ackland. I’ll Stand By You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. Editor Pinney, Susanna, Pimlico, 1998.