WARNER, Sylvia Townsend.

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  • Author(s): Wachman, Gay
  • Source:
    Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature. Letter W, p1024-1025. 2p.
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    • Abstract:
      This article presents describes the works of British author Sylvia Townsend Warner. Between 1925 and 1978, she published seven novels, ten collections of short stories, seven volumes of poetry, a prize-winning biography, two translations, and numerous essays, articles, and political fables in periodicals ranging from the Countryman to New Masses. Satire of imperialist ideology--degeneration theory, primitivism, eugenics--informs Warner's three novels, Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's Maggot, and The True Heart. Their plots are fantastic: Laura Willowes escapes her lot as a middle-class old maid by transforming into a witch: Mr. Fortune loses his missionary faith and recognizes his homosexual love on the Polynesian island of Fanua; in The True Heart's retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, Sukey Bond, an orphan maid-of-all-work, is personally empowered by Queen Victoria to marry the beautiful, middle-class idiot, Eric.