Hello and a very warm welcome to Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week 2020!
Ahem.
The purpose of this Reading Week is to encourage as many people as possible to (re)discover and enjoy the marvellous writings of Sylva Townsend Warner. Of course, every week is Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week really, if you are a person with any sense whatsoever. But this is a moment to pause and celebrate.
STW wrote novels, short stories, poetry and biography; her letters and diaries are also supremely readable (especially the letters!) (but more of that later). She wrote realism (although always with a distinct flavour), fantasy, historical fiction, chronicle – her novels rarely repeated themselves, although her interest in politics and women’s voices are a theme.
During this week I’ll be posting a review of one of her books almost every day from Monday to Friday, and I have tried to reflect the variety of her writings by including a short story collection, her letters, some poems and one of her novels. On Wednesday I’ll post a review of For Sylvia, the very moving autobiography her lover Valentine Ackland wrote for her. It may not add much to your knowledge of STW as a writer but it will enhance your view of her as a person.
I hope that you too will read something of hers and write about it. If you don’t have a lot of time, read one short story, or a poem , and write about that. If you’ve already written something and are thinking, ‘Bother I should have waited’, post a link to it anyway. Post links in the comments this week and I’ll publish a round-up post on Sunday.
You don’t have a blog? That’s no problem! Write your thoughts in a comment to one of my posts – or email me something and I’ll publish it on here as a guest post. (Well – unless it’s full of filth, obviously.)
You’re not sure what to read? There are two new collections of short stories which have been recently published: Of Cats and Elfins: Short Tales and Fantasies (Handheld Press) and English Climate: Wartime Stories (Persephone). Here is a link to last year’s introductory post, if you scroll down there is a list of books in print (although The Flint Anchor is in print again as a physical book). For further inspiration, here is last year’s round-up with links to lots of reviews by readers.
Summer is here and as STW once wrote on the title page of a novel, Summer Will Show. Cancel your socially distanced engagements, settle yourself in a deckchair under an old tree and read something by STW – you won’t regret it!
(Sylvia holding a cat in her garden; photograph from The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society gallery here; the society is an all-round excellent resource for all things STW)