Becoming Sylvia (1 of 2)

'Long live the hedgerows!' Introducing Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978)

A young Sylvia and her father George Townsend Warner with their spaniel, Friday.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society. Today’s post for paid subscribers features a short introduction to the life of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), as a prelude to discussing her novel Lolly Willowes (1926). If you’d like to know more, do have a look at my free post on 20th-century books here. Read on for a quick round-up of this week’s book news and literary links.

Book news

• There’s no paywall this weekend on all Times and Sunday Times articles. You can read about the best-selling books that defined each decade, short articles about lesser-known novels in the excellent ‘Re-Reading’ series, and

  James Marriott
  ’s take on Sally Rooney’s latest.

• ‘What I’d like to read — what I’d like to write — is a book about women who became writers despite their mothers,’ writes

  PartTimeLady
  in Works in Progress, ‘a sort of mash-up of Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives and Colm Tóibín’s two books on men who write and their parents.’

• What makes a good book review? I recently wrote about the gentle art of book reviewing for the ‘bona-fide literary salon’ that is Inner Life. And I was very chuffed to get a mention on the cover of the TLS last week, see below.

  

  Oliver Sacks, and me, on the cover of the TLS

• If you’re keen on foraged fare and discovering inventive ways of cooking scavenged fruits and vegetables, sign up for the wonderfully named ‘Fruits of the Forage’ by

  Valerie Cotter
  (Laura Willowes would approve). I also enjoyed this interview on
  Matthew Long
  ’s ‘Beyond the Bookshelf’ with Eleanor Anstruther, who says: ‘I read every day for about an hour. It’s the same practice as writing. Little and often, a sustained, repetitive schedule that moves mountains.’

• ‘Long live the hedgerows!’ is the rather excellent slogan of the charming Sherlock & Pages bookshop in Frome, Somerset. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes was, apparently, one of the best-selling books last year.

• A kind reader has alerted me to this recent YouTube episode featuring Sylvia Townsend Warner’s writing locations in Dorset (it’s well worth watching). Visible Women UK are currently fundraising for a statue of STW in Dorchester, and say that any leftover funds will be used to conserve her archive.

• There are still a few tickets left for this live Substack event in London I’m taking part in on 27 March. Hope you can come along. But now, back to Sylvia Townsend Warner’s early life, with thanks to

  June Girvin
  for sharing this marvellous book cover based on a London Transport poster.