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Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), the daughter of a history master at Harrow School, was educated at home. She was a munitions worker, then left home to live in London and study music composition; for several years she worked on the Tudor church music project. Meanwhile, at Chaldon Herring in Dorset, she got to know TF Powys, who encouraged her writing. Her first book of poems appeared in 1925 and her first novel Lolly Willowes was published in 1926. In 1930 she met Valentine Ackland and they began a lifelong love affair, living at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset from 1937 onwards. Sylvia Townsend Warner published numerous short stories (144 of them for The New Yorker), eleven volumes of short stories, seven novels and a biography of TH White. She maintained a large correspondence, famously with the novelist William Maxwell.
