X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Sylvia Townsend Warner


Sylvia Townsend Warner

Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honour, after his death in 1916.

Selected letters of Warner and Valentine Ackland have been published twice: Wendy Mulford edited a collection titled This Narrow Place in 1988, and ten years later Susanna Pinney published another selection, Jealousy in Connecticut.


Chaldon Herring

Various other writers and artists lived in the village at different times, such as sisters Elizabeth Muntz, a sculptor, and author and historian Hope Muntz, who wrote The Golden Warrior, novelists Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett, the poets Valentine Ackland and Gamel Woolsey, and the sculptor Stephen Tomlin.

Edgell Rickword

He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as Mulk Raj Anand, Ralph Fox, Julius Lipton, A. L. Morton, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Alick West.

Florence James

She returned with her daughters to London late in 1947 and remained there until 1963, working as a literary agent, initially for Constable and Company, where authors she signed included Mary Durack, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Colin Johnson (aka Mudrooroo Narogin).

The Book of Merlyn

The original manuscript for The Book of Merlyn was discovered amongst this collection, and was prepared for publication by the University of Texas Press in 1977, as The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King, with prologue by Sylvia Townsend Warner and illustrations by Trevor Stubley.

Wendy Mulford

She wrote a biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland (besides providing an introduction to a 1989 reprint of Townsend Warner's 1938 novel After The Death of Don Juan) and co-wrote with Sara Maitland a book on the subject of female saints.


see also