Townsend Warner started this novel with the intention of producing a Marxist-Leninist account of how a community of women made their living in the medieval period. That probably sounds deadly dull, but the book itself is anything but: indeed, it remains one of the most page-turning novels I've read in years. Detailing the lives of a convent through eighty years in the Middle Ages, THE CORNER THAT HELD THEM defies any simple explanation of its plot: nuns come and they leave; mothers superior replace their predecessors and then make new plans for the community (which often come to fruition and often don't); people affiliated with the community are born and then later die. Yet despite its apparent random nature, this remains one of the most engrossing books I can imagine: from its beginnings in disastrous marital infidelity to its unforgettable conclusion of desperate betrayal, it has all the fascination of real lived experience.

Sylvia Townsend Warner counted herself very lucky to have William Maxwell as her New Yorker editor and readers of this volume of their correspondence would agree Warner wrote 153 stories between 1936 and 1977 and found a devoted and discering fan in Maxwell. Many of the letters deal with both Warner's and Maxwell's writing. On occasion Maxwell has to gracefully reject one of Warner's stories (usually with the reassurance that the story is wonderful "but not for The New Yorker"). But what the reader comes to appreciate are the writers' accounts of momentous occasions and everyday life. Maxwell gives us wonderful accounts of an Adlai Stevenson rally and the Vietnam Moratorium. His account of the NYC blackout (in a letter dated November 17, 1965)is one of the best things I've ever read and worth the price of the book. It's such a seamless piece of writing, with each detail depending on what came before, that to quote bits of it would be to trivialize it.
Maxwell, who lived with his wife and two daughters in NYC, is also good with domestic detail and affecting and funny observations. He relates a conversation in which his small daughter laments that he is bald."'Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?'" 'Yes," she says, teaching me a lesson."
And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: ". . .And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."
Townsend who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had her first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting him on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.
He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."
The volume is filled with fine writing and the reader wants very much to know these two people personally.

Mulford's biography of Warner and Ackland is the best source of information on their lives, politics, and writing so far. She gives a remarkably comprehensive and insightful account of the twenty years on which her books centers. This is one of the best biographies of anyone that I have ever read.

My book group chose this book by the interesting description here and review. The idea of a spinster leaving her family to become a witch intrigued us all, but we were disappointed in the book. We found the character not very interesting, and the lack of action calmed us all into slumber while trying to read it. It wasn't a terrible book, it had some interesting things to say, but we could not understand all the immensely positive reviews here.

These new little NYRB editions are just honeys--I have yet to read one that wasn't absolutely spectacular (the editors have superb taste), and the editions themselves are little gems--they FEEL so nice in your hands because they're made of gorgeous high quality paper and set in a lovely font.

Warner's novel is fantastic--its rhythms are slow but musical, and it takes quite a while to determine what awaits Laura in Great Mop. A very, very funny book that also comments movingly on the condition of "odd women" in the generation before Suffrage... I couldn't put this down!

Lolly Willowes is the spirited story of a woman searching for herself. The themes in this book are as applicable now as they were when it was written. Thank you to Academy Chicago for bringing us this beautiful edition with an insightful introduction (they also use the original cover art).

Summer Will Show is Sylvia Townsend Warner's most bold lesbian novel. The book uses numerous scenes and even characters from other great English novels such as Great Expectations. After Sophia Willoughby loses her children to smallpox, she goes to find her husband with his mistress in Paris. She finds them both and his mistress Minna and Sophia find themselves unnaturally drawn to each other. Eventually they find themselves to be soulmates and both become actively involved in the French Revolution. The book contains the wonderful style and metaphors characteristic of Sylvia Townsend Warner. A must-read for Warner fans.

A witty, romantic, political, feminist classic, Summer Will Show is the coming-out story of Sophia Willoughby, an apparently rigidly conventional upper-class early Victorian lady. Her history is gloriously downwardly-mobile as she abandons her arid marriage and ancestral home to find love in the arms of her husband's ex-mistress and life in the underground activities of the new communist movement during the Revolution of 1848 in Paris. Warner's delight in the absurd and the romantic is balanced by her meticulous sense of history; first published in 1936, her narrative's vitality reflects her new political excitement--she joined the communist party in its fight against fascism in 1935--and her day-to-day delight in her ongoing lesbian relationship with poet Valentine Ackland. Summer Will Show is the best "lesbian novel" I have read; celebratory, funny, and worldly-wise, it carries no trace of the anxiety in Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness and most other representations of lesbianism of that time.

I fell into Warner's writing by whim -- a bookclub had a quartet of her novels on sale. Those 4 stories delighted me with their cheerful twists on reality -- devil worship as a cure for housewife's blues, f'r instance -- but one story in particular, Summer Will Show, was harrowing by being too real, too vivid, and that's a love story of two women against a backdrop of war. Having since then read Warner's diaries and letters, and Ackland's "For Sylvia" I believe that the acuteness of the insight in this story stemmed from the deep and cognizant love she had with Ackland. I never cease to recommend Warner's writing to people; I've come to love her diaries and letters more than her stories, for their charm and intelligence and the way in which she can make the most dreary commonplace items and events vivid with humor or threat or beauty. Still, this collection of letters, in which her writing scintillates as usual, bothered me in its subject matter. The collection is presented as a portrait of their relationship (rather than as a literary objet) and you can't help but be moved by the emotions of the writers in these extremely intimate letters, often written when they were unable to speak what needed to be said. The storms of the relationship made me queasy, especially since they seemed so uneven and, pardon the 90's jargon, unhealthy. Bloomsbury mores were a universe unto themselves, but it's still hard to read letter after letter from Ackland proclaiming that her love is the most ardent in the world, but she must be excused so she can go have sex with this American chick for a few more weeks. Warner moves out -- of her own home -- so that the two can have a month together, and in fact picks her own embroidered initials out of the table linen so as not to give offense. It's a bit much. So my overall take on it is that if you can tolerate the emotional context, the language of the letters, esp. Warner's, is magnificent. If you enjoy this book, her diaries and letters to others are even better. All have been edited quite well, with respect for the author and scholarship in general.

After reading all four books in The Once and Future King, I was eager to read The Book of Merlyn. But the book scarcely mentioned the characters found in TOFK; instead, White strays off on tangents and writes endlessly and blantantly his anti-war political views. The very last chapter--about 8 pages-- actually finishes the story by telling what becomes of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the rest. I wonder if anyone calling this book "stunning" has actually read it. I read the whole book, but really only got something from the last chapter. It is well written, but has little to do with Arthurian Legend. Not "exciting conclusion" here, just passive political commentary.

The marvelous 5th book of T. H. White's incredible Arthurian saga. This one, in it's complete lack of swordplay and thrill, is set apart from the preceeding four.

Ok, the first four--definately the Story is the major priority. Focal characters: Arthur, then after "The Sword in the Stone" the focus shifts to Lancelot and the queen, and to a lesser extent the Orkneys, etc. In the final chapter the reader is brought back to Arthur, whose musings on the nature of Man and War also smears our noses in these two essential elements, whose dissection was an important objective in the story for White.

Yeah, yeah, anyone who's read the book knows that. But what about the "Book of Merlyn"?

Well, picture drawing aside the glitter and pizzaz of the storyline that has won over so many people to focus on that teaming world of philosophy and abstract thought that Merlin had shown Arthur as a young king. Take "The Sword in the Stone", a primarily whimsical book in which I believe White first lay the groundwork for the "Book of Merlyn", return an aged, experienced and almost broken Arthur to this sort of setting, and...tada! bring back Merlin and the animals(or rather bring Arthur back to them). There now follows that dissection of War and Man we were talking about.

Yup, the whole book is essentially White's essay on these two subjects, given in a long philisophical discussion between the animals, Merlin, and an older Arthur in the comfort of the Badger's underground burrow(Nimue's cave, ha ha!).

Now for those who are thinking ,"Ye gods, the horror!", I gotta admit, in part, you're right. If you're thinking of reading this as the conclusion to "The Once and Future King" in a steady, smooth stream, you're in for a bumpy ride. Think about it, the book was published posthumously--there are structural problems and stuff(why I rate it 8 and not higher), the most blatant of which is the episodes as the ant and the goose from "The Sword in the Stone" properly belonged here originally, so you bump over that.

Bump.

Next, like I said, Story has taken a decided back seat to Essay. That's a bump for those who loved "The Once and Future King" for the laughter and the tears, a...MAJOR...bump.

BUMP.

But for those who can accept Story's new position in the scheme of things, you'll really dig this. Because White returns to someone he has really neglected in favor of Lancelot and Jenny and all that other stuff--Arthur. Arthur's back and he's gonna get a little attention, undergo a little developement. This is a must for you people. There is also now this beautiful circle to White's saga. And, getting down to the dirt, you are gonna love that Essay I was talking about.

It...is...BRILLIANT. For those who like this sort of thing, you will LOVE it, and for those who don't like this kind of stuff normally, you'll LOVE it anyway because of the original way White did it.

People who dug the "Tao of Pooh", you will LOVE this.

Kids doing an assignment on the underlying symbolism and whatnot of the "Once and Future King", you will LOVE this--it'll be so much help, it's almost cheating.

And. Finally. T.H. White fans everywhere. Read "The Book of Merlyn". In the end, this is what he's all about.

The Book of Merlyn was an incredible book, once again proving the genius of T.H. White. This book is the only sensible conclusion to the Once and Future King and should have been included in the original printing. In The Book of Merlyn, we revisit King Arthur on the night before his final battle with his son, Mordred. Feeling dejected and alone, Arthur's mentor, the lovably eccentric and ingenious Merlyn, returns and whisks the king away to learn two final lessons from the animals he knew as a child. This book is not merely a childish fairytale, but rather an in-depth dissection of human nature in which the human condition is explored in depth and the ever-elusive meaning of life is hinted at. A book for the serious reader or any serious fan of Arthur and Merlyn, The Book of Merlyn is a masterpiece from the mind of one of the greatest writers of the past one hundred years.

The introduction to the Virago edition says that Townsend Warner, a supporter of the Spanish Republic, wrote this book to symbolize Spain and the Civil War of 1936-39. The book, published in 1938,did not receive the attention it merited. It did do something infrequently essayed: elaborate not on an historical but a fictitious figure,one already treated by Mozart, Glück, Molière and, originally, a Spanish monk, Tirso de Molina. In "After the Death...", the author describes Doña Ana's continued fascination with the libertine Juan, who had killed her father only to be dragged down to hell by his victim for his refusal to repent of his ways.Ana's obsession with her late lover has her visit Juan's ancestral home, Viejo Tenorio, prolonging her stay until, unexpectedly, Juan somewhat mysteriously returns in the novel's latter third. As selfish and ruthless as ever, he has no real explanation for his reported cause of death. His reappearance climaxes with a peasants revolt against the Tenorio manor that sees Don Juan ultimately triumphant and symbolic, as Townsend Warner wished, of the dominance of Spanish fascism. The novel's characters-Ana and her pompous husband, Don Ottavio, Juan's father, Don Saturno, and others-are well drawn. The Spanish countryside and the dialogue are made believable through spare, skilled language. The work somehow dissipates in the latter part, with Juan's reappearance an anti-climax as, while proving the banality of evil, he is a more fascinating character off-stage than on, making "After the Death.." a sincere though half-satisfying read.