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Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner Books

Novelist

Letters

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Kingdoms of Elfin

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Lolly Willowes

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Collected Poems

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Dorset Stories

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Selected Stories

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Summer Will Show

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“He used his intellect as he used his legs: to carry him somewhere else. He studied astrology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, numerology, fortification, divination, organ building, metallurgy, medicine, perspective, the kabbala, toxicology, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He kept his interest in anatomy and did a dissection whenever he could get hold of a body. He learned Arabic, Catalan, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Hungarian, Romany, and demotic Greek.”

LearningIntellectChangelingsPolymath
Book:Kingdoms of Elfin
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“After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand.”

Self Discovery
Book:Lolly Willowes
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“There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization.”

FeminismFemale Rage
Book:Lolly Willowes
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“Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.”

TogetherFoodReturnThirdsCookingSmellImprovementFatsKitchenCulinaryChickensFrozenPeacockCiderRoasting
Book:Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner/Garnett letters
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“There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.”

ShouldLittlesFeltSidesLove IsRoomsGriefImpossibleDutyConscienceShould HaveCalmPityInjuryResentmentBoth SidesBruised
Book:Selected Stories
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“When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.”

MindMovingFailingComfortLettersBurdenCirclesSensesDecayRoyalColumnsRoyal FamilyHelpersObituaryPostmanGrasshoppers
Book:Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner
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“once, when I was a young lady and on a night express ... I was awakened by a man coming in from the corridor and taking hold of my leg ... Quite as much to my own astonishment as his, I uttered the most appalling growl that ever came out of a tigress. He fled, poor man, without a word: and I lay there, trembling slightly, not at my escape but at my potentialities.”

MenYoungNightMy OwnPoorConfidenceLaysLegsAwakenedTremblingPoor ManAstonishmentCorridorsYoung LadiesTigress
Author:Sylvia Townsend Warner
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“I have an idea that conscience impedes quite as many merits as faults, is a sort of alloy, a nickel which may prevent silver from bending but also prevents it from shining.”

MayIdeasConscienceShiningFaultsMeritSilverBendingNickels
Book:I'll stand by you: selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland : with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner
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“My grandmother was unsurpassable at sitting. She would sit on tombstones, glaciers, small hard benches with ants crawling over them, fragments of public monuments, other people's wheelbarrows, and when one returned one could be sure of finding her there, conversing affably with the owner of the wheelbarrow.”

PeopleHardFindingsSittingGrandmotherOwnersGrandparentMy GrandmotherFragmentsMonumentAntsBenchesCrawlingTombstoneGlaciersWheelbarrows
Book:Letters
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