Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel, Lolly Willowes; or, The Loving Huntsman (1926), was the first selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, her second novel, Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927), an early sel...
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Sylvia Townsend Warner's short stories are remarkable both for the diversity of their subject matter and for their number. Most frequently Warner's narratives are a blend of realism and the fantastic....
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In the following excerpted review, Howard contends that “though the individual pieces in Scenes of Childhood are charming, bright, and well-turned, I think that book as a whole does Miss Warner...
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In the following review, Davis notes an uneven quality in the sketches in Scenes of Childhood and reflects on her meeting with the author.
Reading this book [Scenes of Childhood], I gradually reali...
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In the following review, Feaver considers Warner's poetic output, contending that “more real cause of regret, however, considering the strangely compelling quality of her best work, is t...
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In the following review, Howard provides a positive review of Warner's collected letters and poetry and addresses the lack of critical attention to her oeuvre.
She has no critical cachet wha...
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In the following review, Panter-Downes offers a laudatory review of Warner's collected letters as well as an overview of the author's life and work.
Some years before she died, in 197...
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In the following review, Perényi asserts that Warner's work is difficult to categorize and has resulted in a lack of sufficient critical attention to her oeuvre.
The death of Sylvia T...
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In the following excerpt, Vannatta provides a positive assessment of The Museum of Cheats.
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) should best be remembered as a short story writer, although she was a p...
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In the following excerpt, Vannatta deems Warner's short fiction pure and economical.
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) never published a representative collection of her short fiction, whic...
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In the following favorable review of Selected Stories, Yardley maintains that however diverse Warner's stories “may be in tone and settings, her stories are all noteworthy for their grac...
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In the following essay, Mulford traces Warner's literary development throughout the 1930s.
The Twenties' Novels: Links and Prefigurations
Writing a review of Stephen Spender and John ...
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In the following essay, Castle discusses Warner's Summer Will Show as a lesbian novel.
What is a lesbian fiction? According to what we might call the ‘Queen Victoria Principle’...
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In the following essay, Knoll perceives Lolly Willowes as a novel that explores the dualism between male aggression and female passivity.
Sylvia Townsend Warner begins with her first novel, Lolly W...
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In the following review, Chisholm offers a favorable review of The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner.
In 1929 Sylvia Townsend Warner described in her diary how she held a friend's baby on he...
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In the following review, Kermode notes the insights that Warner's diaries provide into her life.
Sylvia Townsend Warner died in 1978, aged 84. Her first novel, Lolly Willowes, appeared in 19...
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In the following essay, Steinman considers The Elements of Lavishness a testament to the true friendship between Warner and editor William Maxwell.
Between 1938 and 1978, the inimitable writers Syl...
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In the following review, Southron claims that in The Cat's Cradle Warner is "at her most beguiling best. "
"Our unhappiness transcended our egoism, and by degrees by a ...
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In the following review of A Spirit Rises, Faverty appreciates Warner's ability to create an atmosphere in which the elements of her story seem believable.
In the title story of this collec...
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In the following review, Burnett pronounces Warner's style in the stories of A Spirit Rises lucid and graceful.
Since it is the sharpest and briefest form in dramatic literature, and since ...
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In the following review, which was originally published in The New Republic in 1966, Updike comments on the "genius" of Warner's writing.
The stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner...
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In the following excerpt, Long comments on the "sophistication" and "imagination" of Warner's stories in The Innocent and the Guilty.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, who ...
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In the following interview, which was conducted in 1975, Warner discusses her writing career and political views.
[Sylvia Townsend Warner]: When did I begin to write? I was led away by paper. I...
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In this review, Annan describes Warner's prose as "poetic and . . . mystical. "
What is named on the label is found in the jar: [the stories in Kingdoms of Elfin] really are f...
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In the following review, Smith says that while Warner is dextrous and sharp in her presentation of the elfin world to the reader, behind it all "the reader senses the author's fundamenta...
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In the following excerpt from a review of The Kingdoms of Elfin, Williams praises Warner's prose as "a delight. "
Sylvia Townsend Warner was variously gifted. In The Corner tha...
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In the following essay, Cavaliero lauds Warner's literary skill and "ability to celebrate the singular without declining into singularity. "
Sylvia Townsend Warner may have be...
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In the following review, Toulson calls One Thing Leading to Another, and Other Stories "a good collection" that includes some characters who showcase Warner "at her sharpest and f...
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The critic offers a mixed assessment of the stories in A Garland of Straw.
There have been several unusually interesting volumes of short stories in recent months. In most of them the stories repre...
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In the following review, Duchêne describes Warner's prose as "witty, warmhearted, [and well-mannered," but questions the selection and editing of the stories in One Thing Lea...
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In the excerpt below, Crossley compares the elfin worlds of Warner and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Among the folklore traditions on the origin of elves is the notion that they are the lost children of Adam a...
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In the following excerpt, Brothers examines Warner's contributions to the body of literature inspired by the Spanish Civil War.
Sylvia Townsend Warner is an exile from the pages of literary ...
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In the following excerpt, Trilling claims Warner is "an accomplished practitioner of her craft," but finds fault with artistic practices of the generation of writers to which Warner belo...
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In the following review, Hilton praises The Museum of Cheats, adding that, to fully enjoy the stories, "one must listen as well as read. "
Sylvia Townsend Warner, still best known as...
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In the review below, Holsaert gives a favorable assessment of the stories in The Museum of Cheats, saying that Warner's "skilled guidance" allows ordinary characters to be "...
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In the following excerpt, Jennings finds that the stories in Winter in the Air reflect Warner's perceptivity about people and her strong sense of place.
Winter in the Air, by Sylvia Townsend...
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In the following review, Hay praises Winter in the Air, and Other Stories, calling it "rewarding and stimulating."
Charlton Mackrell, impaled on the shaft of Sylvia Townsend Warner...
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In the following review, Rainer acknowledges Warner's technical skills but finds Winter in the Air, and Other Stories lacking in imagination.
A great deal has happened to both literary taste...
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In the following excerpt from a review of Winter in the Air, Arrowsmith describes Warner as being "an almost flawless writer" within a narrow range of fiction.
Within severe limits, ...
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Critical Essay by Gabriele Annan
[The stories in Kingdoms of Elfin] are fairy stories…. The elfin kingdoms over or underlie (mostly under, because they tend to be subterranean) Europe, and the...
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Critical Essay by Paul Gray
In Kingdoms of Elfin,… Sylvia Townsend Warner … never condescends to an ethereal race that views mortals as "unfailingly serious and unfailingly absur...
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Critical Essay by William Jay Smith
This collection of tales by Sylvia Townsend Warner is, to say the least, cause for celebration…. ["Kingdoms of Elfin"] has all the freshness, ...
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Critical Essay by John Updike
The late Miss Warner, whose more than half century of brilliantly varied and superbly self-possessed literary production never won her the flaming place in the heavens o...
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Critical Essay by W. J. Strachan
[Kingdoms of Elfin] was a return to the earlier fantasy modality of [Sylvia Townsend Warner's] first masterpiece, Lolly Willowes, published half a century prev...
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Critical Essay by Vicki Feaver
Written, Peter Pears explains in his preface, during the last years of her life, most of the poems [in Sylvia Townsend Warner's Twelve Poems] are concerned with ...
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Critical Essay by Gavin Ewart
[Twelve Poems] is more in the nature of a pendant to [Sylvia Townsend Warner's] work and a memorial to her talent than of very great importance in a literary sens...
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