Sylvia Townsend Warner | Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

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Letters to William Maxwell, [2] 15; [10] 59; The Music at Long Verney, [3] 17; The Diaries of, [48] 7

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W is for Warner, Sylvia Townsend | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Slightly Foxed, and a very happy New Year to you all. Before we look ahead to this year’s crop of new publications, we’re taking stock, delving through our bank of back issues and sharing some good reading from the archives. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s joie de vivre – evident in her diaries and described by Jonathan Law in his article from Slightly Foxed Issue 48 – is especially appealing this January. ‘In 1927 Sylvia Townsend Warner was given a smart notebook by a friend; a day out prompted a few hesitant jottings and, before she knew it, she was off . . .’ If you have received a new diary this Christmas, or if we can tempt you with our selection of smart Slightly Foxed notebooks, then perhaps Sylvia can provide inspiration when faced with the blank page. Whatever the case, and wherever we find you, we do hope you’ll enjoy dipping into her life and writing.

Distant Harmonies

Linda Leatherbarrow on Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney

Recently I was given a copy of The Music at Long Verney: Twenty Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It was a revelation. Years ago, when I was a struggling art student, I read and loved her novels, but I somehow failed to discover the short stories. Many had first appeared in The New Yorker, and eight collections in all were published. I began to read, and there was the gracious world of the mind that I remembered from her novels, the lush sentences with their ravishing, tumbling clauses, delicious rhythms, exquisite imagery, painterly detail, the fantastic sense of place.

First Class Mail

John Saumarez Smith on Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letters to William Maxwell

During my early years as a bookseller, much of each day’s business depended on the post: not just brown envelopes enclosing cheques or less welcome envelopes with publishers’ bills, but orders and gossipy letters from customers and friends. In a minor way I kept up several correspondences, more often with those who lived abroad because I was very unlikely then to contact them by telephone. When Helene Hanff published her 84 Charing Cross Road, we cannot have been the only booksellers who reacted by saying that we had hundreds of such letters in our files. Although I’ve managed to keep some of the most interesting ones, it never occurred to me to suggest that our customers should keep my replies. In fact it would have been extremely presumptuous.

Surprised by Joy

Jonathan Law on The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner

It’s always strange to think how easily you might not have met that someone: a bus that arrived on time, or a last drink at the bar, and it might all have been quite different. Our meetings with books can be equally subject to fluke. I was in the queue at Barter Books in Alnwick, a clutch of holiday reading under my arm, when for no reason at all I picked up a green Virago paperback: The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner

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