Chronicles the history of the Elfin kingdoms across Europe, their different peoples, and their varied ways of life, which parallel those of mortals

Kingdoms of Elfin

Literature & Fiction

WARNER, SYLVIA TOWNSEND

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

Upset by the deaths of her children, Sophia Willoughby follows her estranged husband to 1848 Paris, where she falls in love with his mistress, Minna

Summer Will Show (Virago Modern Classics)

Literary

In memory of the wife who had once dishonored and always despised him, Brian de Retteville founded a 12th-century convent in Norfolk. Two centuries later, the Benedictine community is well established there and, as befits a convent whose origin had such ironic beginnings, the inhabitants are prey to the ambitions, squabbles, jealousies, and pleasures of less spiritual environments. An outbreak of the Black Death, the collapse of the convent spire, the Bishop's visitation, and a nun's disappearance are interwoven with the everyday life of the nuns, novices, and prioresses in this marvelous imagined history of a 14th-century nunnery.

The Corner That Held Them (Virago Modern Classics)

Virago Pr

'One of the great British novels of the twentieth century: a narrative of extraordinary reach, power and beauty' Sarah Waters\nThe nuns who enter a medieval Norfolk convent are told to renounce the world, but the world still finds ways to trouble them, whether it is through fire, floods, pestilence, a collapsing spire, jealous rivalries, a priest with a secret or a plague of caterpillars. As we follow their daily lives over three centuries, this masterpiece of historical fiction re-creates a world run by women.\n'As an act of imagined history this novel has few rivals. Also, as it happens, a work of high, frequent comedy' George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement\n'Spellbinding . . . One starts rereading as soon as one has reached the last page' Sunday Times\n'Magnificent' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

The Corner That Held Them (Penguin Modern Classics)

Humor & Satire

Penguin Classics

'A novel of love, war and death; brilliantly entertaining and far ahead of its time' Guardian\n'She is my husband's mistress - and here am I, taking her out to dinner'\nSophia Willoughby of Blandamer House, upstanding Victorian matriarch, has packed her errant husband off to Paris with his mistress Minna. But when tragedy throws her life off balance Sophia goes to seek him out, and instead finds herself intensely attracted to the charismatic, bohemian Minna, who leads her on a wild, chaotic adventure through a city in the throes of revolution.\n'One of the great under-read British novelists of the twentieth century. This is my favourite of her novels' Sarah Waters\n'Every page contains something brilliant, arresting or amusing, and one comes away from it staggered' Claire Harman

Summer Will Show (Penguin Modern Classics)

Lolly Willowes (Penguin Modern Classics)

'She has a talent amounting to genius' John Updike\nDon Juan, that notorious libertine, has disappeared. Has he been dragged down to hell by demons, as rumoured - or has he escaped? Doña Ana, the woman he tried to seduce, will stop at nothing to discover the truth. Set in a rural eighteenth-century Spain rife with suspicion and cruelty, and featuring a glorious cast of peasants, aristocrats and vengeful ghosts, this moving, surprising tragicomedy is also Sylvia Townsend Warner's response to the dark days of the Spanish Civil War.\n'The kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans' Sarah Waters

After the Death of Don Juan (Penguin Modern Classics)

'A comic masterpiece' Patrick Gale, Guardian\nPillar of society and stern upholder of Victorian values, god-fearing Norfolk merchant John Barnard presides over a large and largely unhappy family. This is their story - his brandy-swilling wife, their hapless offspring and their changing fortunes - over the decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner's last novel, The Flint Anchor gloriously overturns our ideas of history, family and storytelling itself.\n'A novel created with solidity and subtlety of feeling, a fusion of warmth, wit and quietly biting shrewdness that are reminiscent of Jane Austen' Atlantic Review\n'As a sustained work of historical imagination, it has few rivals ... one of the most acute and intelligent writers of her age' Claire Harman

The Flint Anchor (Penguin Modern Classics)

'Witty, poetic, clairvoyant' John Updike\nThe Reverend Timothy Fortune, ex-clerk of the Hornsey branch of Lloyds Bank, has found his vocation: to convert the inhabitants of the remote tropical island of Fanua to Christianity. Even when everyone except for a young boy called Lueli remains indifferent to his preaching, Mr Fortune's good spirits cannot be dampened - until one day his faith is put to a terrible test.\n'This quizzical tale is so intensely moving' Gillian Beer, New Statesman\n'Original, elegant and hypnotically strange' Miranda Seymour, The New York Times\n'Sylvia Townsend Warner pursues the psychology of the story with beautiful accuracy' John Carey

Mr Fortune's Maggot (Penguin Modern Classics)

'The kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans ... her sympathies tended naturally to the marginal, the vulnerable, the exploited, the obscure' Sarah Waters\nSukey Bond, a sixteen-year-old orphan, is sent to work as a servant at a farm on the remote Essex Marshes. There she falls in love with gentle, unworldly Eric, the son of the rector's wife, only for them to be separated when their relationship is discovered. But nothing will deter Sukey in her quest to be reunited with her true love, even if it means seeking the help of Queen Victoria herself.\n'One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers' Hermione Lee\n'One can't be too thankful that Miss Townsend Warner has lived to discover the alchemist's secret of transmuting the past into pure gold' Hilary Spurling

The True Heart (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Books by WARNER, SYLVIA TOWNSEND