The Mumpsimus

I began writing this while attending Readercon 32, an annual convention I've been attending for a while. (I hope to do an Archive Dive post about that soon.) Saturday morning, I went to a phenomenal panel discussion of Sylvia Townsend Warner as a fantasist. This was, in fact, a panel I proposed myself, though I did not notice it on the list when I signed up for panels, or I would have volunteered, so I was tremendously pleased to see it on the schedule — I had feared the topic was seen as too niche. I'm actually glad I missed the sign-up, because the panelists were all knowledgeable, thoughtful, and a joy to listen to. I really would have had nothing to add. I will share a few of the insights from the panel discussion, but first want to provide a quick overview of why I think Warner is important and then some updates about the availability of Warner's books in the US and UK (with the demise of The Book Depository, I'm less certain of availability for other countries). ...

While canonical literary history has generally told the story of 20th Century British fiction as the story of men, with some exemplary women here and there, we have enough distance now to see that while the men were certainly the grabbers of headlines and awards, their canonicity was less a matter of merit than of their control of the culture industry. The men ate up all the air in the rooms of litchat. Meanwhile, by and large it was women who wrote the fiction that has survived the years the best, and which remains most readable and interesting today. This is especially true around midcentury, where we can speak of Rebecca West (1892-1983), Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), Anna Kavan (1901-1968), Stevie Smith (1902-1971 [best known as a poet, but author of 3 interesting novels]), Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), Muriel Spark (1918-2006), Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), Doris Lessing (1919-2013) — and many others, both well-know...

For decades now, scholars and connoisseurs have declared Sylvia Townsend Warner to be an unjustly — even criminally — neglected writer. Every time it seems like she might gain the attention she deserves (at her death in 1978, with various posthumous collections of stories and letters, with the publication of biographies, with the reprinting of her books by Virago and then New York Review of Books ), the attention doesn't seem to last. Appreciations appear ( thoughtful , considered ) ... and then Warner seems to return to obscurity. There's a Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, but as of this writing its website is unreachable. While I hope the recent reissue of The Corner That Held Them  by NYRB will spark an excited revival of interest in Warner's work — especially her short stories of the '50s and '60s, which show Warner at the height of her craft, unpredictable and frequently stunning — I know better than to hold my breath. Though her work offers many pleasu...