Sarah Waters on Sylvia Townsend Warner

07/03/2012 Richard T. Kelly

Finds’ has been thrilled to reissue four collections of short stories by the great Sylvia Townsend Warner, an endeavour which we were pleased to have endorsed by Sarah Waters, who told us last year that she rated STW as ‘one of the most talented and well-respected British authors of the twentieth century.’ Last weekend Waters expanded on this appreciation in a long piece for the Guardian, focused on the debut novel Lolly Willowes but considering many aspects of STW’s life, work, accomplishments and influence. It is a splendid tribute worth reading in full:

‘The intelligence of her writing has sometimes resulted in her fiction being misunderstood as difficult, and has perhaps lost her readers; she’s certainly one of the most shamefully under-read great British authors of the past 100 years… She remains [] relatively under-appreciated – a fact that baffles, frustrates and, I think, secretly pleases her admirers, for she’s the kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans. She has a special significance for lesbian readers, thanks not so much to the content of her work (only her fourth novel, Summer Will Show, can really be claimed as a lesbian text) as to the example of her life, nearly 40 years of which she spent in open, passionate partnership with another woman, Valentine Ackland. Both she and Ackland were writers and avid readers, and both were seriously committed to radical leftwing causes. Together they constitute a tremendously inspiring model of romantic, literary and political engagement.’

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The perenially ‘sharp’ if ‘under-read’ Sylvia (Townsend Warner); and ‘fantastic’ Faber Finds (!)

14/09/2011 Richard T. Kelly

We are most grateful for any and all interest in our offerings from the well-read daily papers, and so take special pride in this commendation from the Guardian‘s September fiction paperback round-up of last week. Justine Jordan writes that:

“the fantastic Faber Finds – “The Place for Lost Books” – has rescued Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1966 sharp story collection ‘A Stranger With a Bag and Other Stories’. The author of ‘Lolly Willowes’ is now, as Sarah Waters says, “shamefully under-read”; this edition might help to correct that.”


Amen to that. Townsend Warner does seem to enjoy one of those Orwellian ‘large, vague renowns’ – to be, in the phrase that can curse just as it blesses – ‘a writer’s writer.’ But when as here the first writer in that sequence is Sarah Waters then one can only hope that her good offices will act as bone fides enough for new readers to give Sylvia a whirl.

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In praise of the great Sylvia Townsend Warner: Sarah Waters + Adam Mars-Jones

21/07/2011 Richard T. Kelly

Sylvia Townsend Warner by Cecil Beaton, 1930

A Stranger with a Bag and Other Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner is new in Faber Finds this month, following on from our publication of her A Spirit Rises, Winter in the Air, and Scenes of Childhood, all available to order at this page too. I am delighted to say that the occasion of our latest reissue is marked with tributes from two of the most esteemed novelists at work today. I thank Sarah and Adam for their contributions, and very much hope that readers yet to encounter this remarkable writer on the page will take onboard these powerful recommendations:

Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most talented and well-respected British authors of the twentieth century. Today she is shamefully under-read. Her short stories have been particularly neglected – and yet, intelligent, lyrical, beautifully crafted, they constitute some of the very best of her work. It is wonderful to see so many of them being made available again by Faber Finds.
SARAH WATERS


Sylvia Townsend Warner is too definite a personality to be described as ‘elusive’, but I’ve never been able to predict where she is taking me, and never been disappointed by where it turned out to be.
ADAM MARS-JONES

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New in Faber Finds: February 2011

16/02/2011 Richard T. Kelly

The classic novel by Jean Rhys, whose definitive biography is now in Finds

It’s my pleasure to unveil another strong, diverse and enticing selection of titles newly reissued in Finds as of this month. The nominees for your reading pleasure are:

FICTION

A Spirit Rises – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Our second offering of stories from this brilliant and versatile author, much admired by (inter alia) Sarah Waters and Ali Smith. Dovegreyreader also offers a recent appreciation here.

A Test to Destruction - Henry Williamson
The eighth of the fifteen titles in the Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight sequence, the numbers of whose readers in Finds appear to be growing daily…

The Bath Detective – Christopher Lee
The first in a thriller trilogy by the acclaimed novelist, historian and broadcaster whose own website is here.

Mark Only – T. F. Powys
The latest in our restoration to print of extraordinary works by the more austere of the prodigious Powys boys (see previous post here)…

NON-FICTION

Jean Rhys: Life and Work – Carole Angier
The definitive study of the melancholy author whose glorious final novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, confirmed Al Alvarez in calling her “the best living English novelist.”

The Embattled Mountain – F. W. D. Deakin
Bill Deakin’s scintillating account of his WWII mission into Yugoslavia to locate and assess Tito and his Partisans. Our earlier post on Deakin is here, and Mark Wheeler’s tremendous New Introduction here.

Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War - Geoffrey Elliott & Harold Shukman
A gem of an insight into how certain bright young scholars of the 1950s (among them A. Bennett, M. Frayn and DM Thomas) sidestepped National Service so as to be instructed in Russian for the betterment of the Cold War effort. Fine Spectator review here, and more to come on this blog…

Enid Bagnold – Anne Sebba
Our latest from Anne Sebba, a marvellous study of the brilliant and controversial woman who wrote National Velvet and The Chalk Garden. See Anne’s personal author site here.

Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912-1916 - John Grigg
We continue to reissue Grigg’s magisterial sequence, hailed by the Telegraph as overall “one of the most brilliant biographies of recent times”, this third volume the winner of the Wolfson Prize.

East End My Cradle – Willy Goldman
An unforgettable, affectionate evocation of 1930s London life from an author hailed in his time as “a sort of Proust of the Whitechapel Road.” Longer appreciation to follow on this blog v soon…

The Coming of the Barbarians: A Story of Western Settlement in Japan 1853-1870 – Pat Barr
An evocative and apt title for Pat Barr’s indispensable account of the opening to Japan first forged by US Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry – a story that inspired, inter alia, Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures…

Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History - Roy Foster
An inspired collection of thematically-linked essays praised in the LRB by Colm Toibin as ‘important and original’. (Toibin also hailed Foster as ‘the most brilliant and courageous Irish historian of his generation’, and his fascinating essay is fully available here.)

How the English Made the Alps – Jim Ring
An exciting anecdotal study of how 19th-century English poets, Christians and natural scientists sought out the highest peaks of Alpine glory, driven – as E.S. Turner put it in his LRB review – by “lust for adventure, scientific curiosity, vanity, national pride, the need for spiritual uplift, the geological urge to disprove Genesis, the expansion of railways, the tourist mania, the deathly pilgrimages of the tubercular and, finally, the primitive and irresistible joys of the piste…” Phew!

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