Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist, poet and musicologist, known for works such as the novels Lolly Willowes (1926) and The Corner That Held Them (1948), and the short story collection Kingdoms of Elfin (1977). She spent most of her adult life in partnership with the poet Valentine Ackland.

Early life and family

Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, the only child of Eleanor "Nora" Mary (née Hudleston) and her husband George Townsend Warner. Her father was a house-master at Harrow, one of the most prestigious British "public" (independent) schools, and was associated with an award which was posthumously renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize.

As a child, Townsend Warner was home-schooled by her father after being expelled from kindergarten for mimicking the teachers. She was musically inclined, and, before World War I, planned to study in Vienna under Schoenberg. She enjoyed a seemingly idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire. In 1914, following the outbreak of World War I, Warner moved to London and she worked in a munitions factory. She was strongly affected by her father's death in 1916.

Between 1875 and 1895, Warner's paternal grandfather, The Reverend George Townsend Warner, was headmaster of Newton Abbot Proprietary College in Devon where he taught Arthur Quiller Couch, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, Paris Singer and Percy Fawcett.

Adult life

In 1923, Warner met Theodor Francis "T. F." Powys, a novelist and short story writer, whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. The two became friends, and her debut novel, Lolly Willowes, was published shortly after in 1926. From her first work, it was clear that Warner's focus was on subverting societal norms; she would later heavily use the themes of rejecting the Church, a need for female empowerment, and independence in her works. It was at Powys' home that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet; the two women fell in love, moving in together in 1930 and eventually settling at Frome Vauchurch, Dorset, in 1937. Her relationship with Ackland inspired many of her works, and the couple collaborated on a collection of poems, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, published in 1933.

Warner and Ackland's relationship was a tumultuous one, in part due to Ackland's infidelity, which included an affair with fellow writer Elizabeth Wade White. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party, and Marxist ideals found their way into Warner's works. She participated in the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, held in Valencia between 4 and 17 July 1937, while serving in the Red Cross as part of the international response to the Spanish Civil War. When the Second Spanish Republic fell in 1939, Warner and Ackland returned to England, living there together until Ackland's death in 1969.

E. M. Delafield portrayed a visit to Warner in 1931 in her The Provincial Lady Goes Further describing her as "novelist, famous in two continents for numerous and brilliant contributions to literature" and giving her and Ackland the pseudonyms "Carina/ Charlotte Volley" and "Miss Postman".

In 1937, Warner and Ackland moved to a house called Riversdale beside the River Frome in Frome Vauchurch near Maiden Newton. They initially rented the house and did not intend to stay there long; however, they bought it in 1946 and they lived there for the rest of their lives. In 1950 and 1951, they also rented Great Eye Folly at Salthouse, where Warner wrote her final novel, The Flint Anchor (published 1954).

After Warner's death in 1978, her ashes were buried with Ackland's at St Nicholas, Chaldon Herring, Dorset.

Work

Early in her career Warner researched 15th and 16th century music. From 1917 she was in regular employment as one of the editors of Tudor Church Music, ten volumes published by Oxford University Press in the 1920s with the support of the Carnegie UK Trust. The lead editor was initially Sir Richard Terry, who, as the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, had been a pioneer in the revival of Tudor vocal repertoire. Warner obtained the work as the protegee of her lover and music teacher Sir Percy Buck, who was on the editorial committee.

Warner was involved in travelling to study source material and in transcribing the music into modern musical notation for publication. Warner wrote a section on musical notation for the Oxford History of Music (it appeared in the introductory volume of 1929). Music critic Richard Aldrich highlighted her contribution as particularly "lucid and intelligible".

Her first published book was the 1925 poetry collection The Espalier, which was praised by A. E. Housman and Arthur Quiller-Couch. She was encouraged to write fiction by David Garnett. Warner's novels included Lolly Willowes (1926), Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), Summer Will Show (1936), and The Corner That Held Them (1948). 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. Mr Fortune's Maggot, about a missionary in the Pacific Islands, has been described as a "satirical, anti-imperialist novel". In Summer Will Show, the heroine, Sophia Willoughby, travels to Paris during the 1848 Revolution and falls in love with a woman. The Corner That Held Them (1948) focuses on the lives of a community of nuns in a medieval convent.