Bøker av Sylvia Townsend Warner

Feeling overwhelmed and suffocated by familial obligations, Laura Willowes moves to Chiltern Hills to find her peace. Soon followed by her nephew, Titus, a frustrated Laura forges a pact with Satan hoping to be free once more. Lolly Willowes; Or, The Loving Huntsman is Sylvia Townsend Warner¿s comedic portrayal of one woman¿s fight against societal norms and journey to peace on her own terms.

Set in early twentieth-century England, Lolly Willowes is a satirical comedy of manners and an early feminist classic. When her newfound contentment is threatened, Lolly embraces a dark path to secure an audacious freedom.

Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman is a novel by English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, her first, published in 1926. It has been described as an early feminist classic."Lolly" is the version of Laura's name used by her family after a mispronunciation by a young niece. She comes to dislike being called "Aunt Lolly" and to see the name as a symbol of her lack of independence. "The Loving Huntsman" refers to Satan, whom Laura envisions as hunting souls in a kindly way.Lolly Willowes is a satirical comedy of manners incorporating elements of fantasy. It is the story of a middle-aged spinster who moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft. The novel opens at the turn of the twentieth century, with Laura Willowes moving from Somerset to London to live with her brother Henry and his family. The move comes in the wake of the death of Laura's father, Everard, with whom she lived at the family home, Lady Place. Laura's other brother, James, moves into Lady Place with his wife and his young son, Titus, with the intention to continue the family's brewing business. However, James dies suddenly of a heart attack and Lady Place is rented out, with the view that Titus, once grown up, will return to the home and run the business.After twenty years of being a live-in aunt Laura finds herself feeling increasingly stifled both by her obligations to the family and by living in London. When shopping for flowers on the Moscow Road, Laura decides she wishes to move to the Chiltern Hills and, buying a guide book and map to the area, she picks the village of Great Mop as her new home. Against the wishes of her extended family, Laura moves to Great Mop and finds herself entranced and overwhelmed by the chalk hills and beech woods. Though sometimes disturbed by strange noises at night, she settles in and befriends her landlady and a poultry farmer.After a while, Titus decides to move from his lodgings in Bloomsbury to Great Mop and be a writer, rather than managing the family business. Titus's renewed social and domestic reliance on Laura make her feel frustrated that even living in the Chilterns she cannot escape the duties expected of women. When out walking, she makes a pact with a force that she takes to be Satan, to be free from such duties. On returning to her lodgings, she discovers a kitten, whom she takes to be Satan's emissary, and names him Vinegar, in reference to an old picture of witches' familiars. Subsequently, her landlady takes her to a Witches' Sabbath attended by many of the villagers.Titus is plagued with misadventures, such as having his milk constantly curdle and falling into a nest of wasps. Finally, he proposes marriage to a London visitor, Pandora Williams, who has treated his wasp stings, and the two retreat to London. Laura, relieved, meets Satan at Mulgrave Folly and tells him that women are like 'sticks of dynamite' waiting to explode and that all women are witches even 'if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it's there - ready!' The novel ends with Laura acknowledging that her new freedom comes at the expense of knowing that she belongs to the 'satisfied but profound indifferent ownership' of Satan.The novel was well received by critics on its publication. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina and in the USA it was the very first Book Of The Month for the Book Club.Until the 1960s, the manuscript of Lolly Willowes was displayed in the New York Public Library.In 2014, Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 Best Novels in English, for his list for The Guardian. (wikipedia.org)

Lolly Willowes is a satirical comedy of manners incorporating elements of fantasy. It is the story of a middle-aged spinster who moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft. The novel opens at the turn of the twentieth century, with Laura Willowes moving from Somerset to London to live with her brother Henry and his family. The move comes in the wake of the death of Laura's father, Everard, with whom she lived at the family home, Lady Place. Laura's other brother, James, moves into Lady Place with his wife and his young son, Titus, with the intention to continue the family's brewing business. However, James dies suddenly of a heart attack and Lady Place is rented out, with the view that Titus, once grown up, will return to the home and run the business.After twenty years of being a live-in aunt, Laura finds herself feeling increasingly stifled both by her obligations to the family and by living in London. When shopping for flowers on the Moscow Road, Laura decides she wishes to move to the Chiltern Hills and, buying a guidebook and map to the area, she picks the village of Great Mop as her new home. Against the wishes of her extended family, Laura moves to Great Mop and finds herself entranced and overwhelmed by the chalk hills and beech woods. Though sometimes disturbed by strange noises at night, she settles in and befriends her landlady and a poultry farmer.After a while, Titus decides to move from his lodgings in Bloomsbury to Great Mop and be a writer, rather than managing the family business. Titus's renewed social and domestic reliance on Laura makes her feel frustrated that even living in the Chilterns she cannot escape the duties expected of women. When out walking, she makes a pact with a force that she takes to be Satan, to be free from such duties. On returning to her lodgings, she discovers a kitten, whom she takes to be Satan's emissary, and names him Vinegar, in reference to an old picture of witches' familiars. Subsequently, her landlady takes her to a Witches' Sabbath attended by many of the villagers.Titus is plagued with misadventures, such as having his milk constantly curdle and falling into a nest of wasps. Finally, he proposes marriage to a London visitor, Pandora Williams, who has treated his wasp stings, and the two retreat to London. Laura, relieved, meets Satan at Mulgrave Folly and tells him that women are like 'sticks of dynamite' waiting to explode and that all women are witches even 'if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it's there - ready!' The novel ends with Laura acknowledging that her new freedom comes at the expense of knowing that she belongs to the 'satisfied but profound indifferent ownership' of Satan.

T H White, author of The Sword in The Stone, The Once and Future King, The Goshawk, and many other works of English literature, died in Greece from a heart attack in 1964, aged 57. The eminent novelist and critic Sylvia Townsend Warner was asked to write his biography, now republished for a new generation. The biography was published in 1967 and was Warner’s greatest critical success since her first novel, Lolly Willowes (1926). It reveals White’s passion for life, for learning, and for animals and birds, particularly hawks and dogs; his self-exile to Ireland during the Second World War, the creation of The Sword in the Stone, the first in the tetralogy The Once and Future King, and the unexpected wealth and fame that came with the Disney cartoon of the same name, and the Broadway musical Camelot. Warner treats White’s repressed sexual predilections with humane understanding in this wise portrait of a tormented literary giant, written by a novelist and a poet.

In the course of her brilliant career Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote superbly in many and diverse forms but never penned a memoir, properly speaking. However, from the 1930s to the 1970s she did contribute a series of short reminiscences to the New Yorker. Scenes of Childhood collects and orders those reminiscences, thus forming a volume that reads as a joyous, wry and moving testament to the experience of being alive. The collection evokes a recognisably English world of nannies, butlers, pet podles, public schools, 'good works' and country churches, but the resonances of these stories are universal - funny and touching by turns.

The 23 stories in Of Cats and Elfins encompass scholarship, black humour, the Gothic, and the anthropomorphic cats of The Cat's Cradle Book (1940), which enact Warner's preoccupation with the dark forces at large in Europe in the later 1930s. This is a major fantasy collection for a new generation of fantasy enthusiasts and Warner fans.

Endorsed by Neil Gaiman, this new edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner's final collection of short stories brings her fantasy writing to a new readership. These sixteen sly and enchanting stories of Elfindom show Warner's mastery of realist fantasy that recalls the success of her first novel, the witchcraft classic Lolly Willowes (1926).

In this delightful and witty novel, Laura Willowes rebels against pressure to be the perfect "maiden aunt." Not interested in men or the rushed life of London, Laura is forced to move there from her beloved countryside after the death of her father. Finally, she strikes out for the countryside on her own, selling her soul to an affable but rather simpleminded devil. First written in the 1920s, this book is timely and entertaining. It was the first selection of the Book of the Month Club in 1926.