Work
Early in her career she researched 15th and 16th century music, and spent ten years as one of the editors of the substantial Tudor Church Music, published by Oxford University Press. In 1934 she published a joint collection of poems with Valentine Ackland entitled Whether a Dove or a Seagull.
Her novels were Lolly Willowes (1926), Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The True Heart (1929), Summer Will Show (1936), After the Death of Don Juan (1938), The Corner That Held Them (1948), The Flint Anchor (1954). Recurring themes are evident in a number of her works. These include a rejection of Christianity (in Mr Fortune's Maggot, and in Lolly Willowes, where the protagonist becomes a witch); the position of women in patriarchal societies (Lolly Willowes, Summer Will Show, The Corner that Held Them); ambiguous sexuality, or bisexuality (Lolly Willowes, Mr Fortune's Maggot, Summer Will Show); and lyrical descriptions of landscape.
Her short stories include the collections A Moral Ending and Other Stories, The Salutation, More Joy in Heaven, The Cat's Cradle Book, A Garland of Straw, The Museum of Cheats. Winter in the Air, A Spirit Rises, A Stranger with a Bag, The Innocent and the Guilty, and One Thing Leading to Another. Her final work was a series of linked short stories set in the supernatural Kingdoms of Elfin.
In addition to fiction, Warner published a biography of the novelist T.H. White, which The New York Times declared "a small masterpiece which may well be read long after the writings of its subject have been forgotten." Although Townsend never wrote an autobiography, Scenes of Childhood was compiled after her death from short reminiscences published over the years in the New Yorker. She also translated Contre Saint-Beuve by Marcel Proust from the original French into English.
In the 1970s, she became known as a significant writer of feminist or lesbian sentiment, and her novels were among the earlier ones to be revived by Virago Press. Selected letters of Warner and Valentine Ackland have been published twice: Wendy Mulford edited a collection titled This Narrow Place in 1988, and ten years later Susanna Pinney published another selection under the title Jealousy in Connecticut.
Read more about this topic: Sylvia Townsend Warner
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life.”
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“All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.”
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“O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now ly’st victorious
Among thy slain self-kill’d
Not willingly, but tangl’d in the fold
Of dire necessity”
—John Milton (1608–1674)