Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Sylvia Townsend Warner (born December 6, 1893 in Harrow on the Hill , † May 1, 1978 in Frome Vauchurch , Dorset ) was a British writer and musicologist .

Life

Sylvia was the only child of George Townsend Warner, history teacher and later director of the history department at Harrow Private School , and his wife Nora. She was homeschooled by her parents. After her father's death, she moved to London . As a talented musician, she planned to study with Schönberg in Vienna, but this was prevented by the outbreak of war in 1914. From 1917 she was one of the editors of the ten-volume Tudor Church Music , which was published between 1922 and 1929 by Oxford University Press . During this time she began writing poetry and published her first novels Lolly Willowes, or, The Loving Huntsman (1926) followed by Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927).

At the instigation of Stephen Tomlin, a pupil of her father's, she went to Chaldon Herring , Dorset , in 1922 , where she met the writer Theodore Powys , a brother of John Cowper Powys . Together with Tomlin and David Garnett she edited the novels and short stories of T. Powys.

At T. Powys she met the poet Valentine Ackland . Sylvia bought a cottage in Chaldon Herring in 1930 and invited Valentine to live with her. Together they published the volume of poetry Whether a Dove or Seagull in 1933 . The love affair between the two lasted until 1969, when Valentine died of breast cancer. After Ackland's death, Sylvia published an anthology of her poems under the title The Nature of the Moment .

In 1935, Ackland and Townsend Warner joined the Communist Party of Great Britain , attended meetings, raised funds and published in left-wing newspapers. The two visited Spain twice and reported on the Spanish Civil War .

In 1937 the couple moved to a riverside house in Frome Vauchurch , Dorset, and this is where most of Townsend Warner's work originated. Sylvia was a prolific writer; In addition to poems, she wrote numerous short stories that were collected in 8 volumes, including 140 for the New Yorker . She wrote seven novels, a biography of TH White and translated Proust's Contre Saint Beauve . She wrote until her death. In the last years of her life she began a series of narratives that take place in an imaginary elven realm. Sylvia Townsend Warner died on May 1, 1978. Her ashes lie with that of her companion Valentine Ackland in the East Chaldon cemetery.

In 1972 she was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Works

Novels

  • Lolly Willowes or the loving huntsman. 1926 (German Lolly Willowes or the loving hunter man . Leipzig 1930, new edition from Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-608-95871-1 . New edition from Zurich: Dörlemann, 2020, ISBN 978-3-03820-079 -6
  • Mr Fortune's Maggot. 1927 (German Mister Fortunes last paradise. Union, Zurich 1986, new edition 2005, ISBN 3-293-20321-3 ).
  • 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

stories

  • The salutation. 1932
  • More Joy In Heaven. 1935
  • A Garland Of Straw. 1943
  • The Museum Of Cheats. 1947
  • Winter In The Air. 1955
  • The Cat's Cradle Book. 1960
  • A Spirit Rises. 1962
  • A stranger with a bag. 1966
  • The Innocent And The Guilty. 1971
  • Kingdoms Of Elfin. 1977 (German. The five black swans and other fairy stories. Luchterhand, Darmstadt and Neuwied 1981, ISBN 3-472-86511-3 .)
  • Scenes of Childhood and Other Stories. 1981
  • One thing leading to another and other stories. 1984
  • Selected stories. 1988
  • The Music at Long Verney. 2001
  • Dorset Stories. 2006

Poems

  • The Espalier. 1925
  • Time Importuned. 1928
  • Opus 7. 1931
  • Whether A Dove Or Seagull. (with Valentine Ackland) 1934
  • Boxwood. 1957
  • Twelve poems. 1980
  • Collected poems. 1982
  • New Collected Poems. 2008

Other works

  • Somerset. 1949
  • Jane austen. (Pamphlet) 1951
  • TH White , biography, 1967
  • Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner. 1994
  • Sylvia and David - The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters. 1994 (Ed .: David Garnett)
  • I'll Stand By You. Selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. 1998
  • The Element of Lavishness. Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell. 2001

literature

  • Claire Harman : Sylvia Townsend Warner. A biography . Minerva Books, London 1991, ISBN 0-7493-9086-7 .
  • Wendy Mulford: This Narrow Place. Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland; life, letters and politics 1930–1951 . Pandora Publ., London 1988, ISBN 0-86358-262-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978). Dorset Ancestors, April 25, 2012, accessed November 24, 2013 .
  2. ^ Honorary Members: Sylvia Townsend Warner. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 26, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Warner, Sylvia Townsend
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Harrow on the Hill
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1978
Place of death Frome Vauchurch , Dorset