SOURCE: Perényi, Eleanor. “The Good Witch of the West.” New York Review of Books 32 (18 July 1985): 27-30.

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 Townsend Warner in 1978 at the age of eighty-five was unmourned by any major critic in this country. “Noted for her graceful style and ironic wit,” said The New York Times in one of those obituaries that read like a passport to respectable oblivion. Though not exactly neglected (her short fiction appeared for decades in The New Yorker and was regularly collected into book form: eight volumes in all), she somehow missed the gold ring on the literary merry-go-round without, on the other hand, acquiring that underground status that has proved so valuable to Jean Rhys's reputation, or a champion with...