Valentine Ackland

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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.
145, 176, 307
Black and white photograph of Valentine Ackland in a rural setting at Winterton in Norfolk (her family's holiday home) in 1928. Her hair is cropped short, and she is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, dark tie, breeches, and hunting boots, and holding a rifle.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Sylvia Townsend Warner
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, pp. xi - xxiii; 275.
xix-xx
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.
131-2
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, p. various pages.
viii, 48
Ackland, Valentine. For Sylvia: An Honest Account. Chatto and Windus.
122-5
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
33-4
Baldwin, Dean, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 139. Gale Research.
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.
289-90
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...
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 Maxwell, Chatto and Windus, 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, 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.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
87-8
politics Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW and Valentine Ackland made a second visit to Spain to attend the Second Congress of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture , held in Madrid.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
90
Residence Sylvia Townsend Warner
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...
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 Sylvia Townsend Warner
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.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sylvia Townsend Warner
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...
Travel Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW and Valentine Ackland sailed for the United States, where Warner took part in the Third Congress of American Writers in New York.
Mulford, Wendy. This Narrow Place. Pandora.
135

Timeline

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 .

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.
Ackland, Valentine. Journey From Winter. Editor Bingham, Frances, Carcanet Press, 2008.
Ackland, Valentine. Later Poems. Editor Warner, Sylvia Townsend, Privately printed by Clare, Son, 1970.
Ackland, Valentine. The Nature of the Moment. Chatto and Windus, 1973.
Ackland, Valentine. The Nature of the Moment. New Directions, 1974.
Ackland, Valentine. Twenty-Eight Poems. Privately printed by Clare, Son and Company, 1957.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and Valentine Ackland. Whether a Dove or Seagull. Viking, 1933.