After the Death of Don Juan

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'She has a talent amounting to genius' John Updike 
 
Don 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. 
 
'The kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans' Sarah Waters

One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) grew up in rural Devonshire before moving to London and writing her debut novel, Lolly Willowes (1926). With her partner Valentine Ackland, she was active in the Communist Party and served in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War. Her novels include Mr Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart, Summer Will Show, After the Death of Don Juan, The Corner That Held Them and The Flint Anchor.

Don 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.

The Flint Anchor

'A comic masterpiece' Patrick Gale, Guardian 
 
Pillar 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. 
 
'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 
 
'As a sustained work of historical imagination, it has few rivals ... one of the most acute and intelligent writers of her age' Claire Harman

A novel created with solidity and subtlety of feeling, a fusion of warmth, wit and quietly biting shrewdness that are reminiscent of Jane Austen

Pillar 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.

Mr Fortune's Maggot

'Witty, poetic, clairvoyant' John Updike 
 
The 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. 
 
'This quizzical tale is so intensely moving' Gillian Beer, New Statesman 
 
'Original, elegant and hypnotically strange' Miranda Seymour, The New York Times 
 
'Sylvia Townsend Warner pursues the psychology of the story with beautiful accuracy' John Carey

Original, elegant and hypnotically strange

At long last I pulled down from its place on the shelves Sylvia Townsend Warner's plump little novel impishly titled Mr. Fortune's Maggot and was once again amazed by what a witty, poetic, clairvoyant writer this English woman was

Mr. Fortune's Maggot is satire at its best. There are passages here - particularly those delightfully malicious ones, of which there are many - that still cause the reader to laugh out loud. There is so much truth here

Sylvia Townsend Warner pursues the psychology of the story with beautiful accuracy

Her writing is full of melodic skills... Her sentences move like talk between intimates. Perhaps that is why this quizzical tale is so intensely moving

After three years on the remote tropical island of Fanua, Timothy Fortune, a missionary from London, has made little headway. The islanders show very little interest in Christianity and he has only a single convert: a boy, Lueli. As Mr Fortune's affections for both Lueli and his new island home deepen, he begins to question all his old certainties - until one day he is put to a terrible test. 
 
A wry exploration of faith, colonialism and the demands of love, Mr Fortune's Maggot is as quietly subversive as it is delightful.

The True Heart

'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 
 
Sukey 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. 
 
'One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers' Hermione Lee 
 
'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 kind of novelist who inspires an intense sense of ownership in her fans ... though entirely without sentimentality, her sympathies tended naturally to the marginal, the vulnerable, the exploited, the obscure

Leaving her orphanage at sixteen, Sukey Bond finds employment as a servant in the remote New Easter Farm, deep within the Essex Marshes. There she falls in love with simple, gentle Eric, the son of the rector's wife. But when their relationship is discovered, they are swiftly separated. So begins Sukey's quest to be reunited, a quest that will take her through every layer of Victorian society...

Penguin Modern Classics

The Corner That Held Them

'One of the great British novels of the twentieth century: a narrative of extraordinary reach, power and beauty' Sarah Waters 
 
The 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. 
 
'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 
 
'Spellbinding . . . One starts rereading as soon as one has reached the last page' Sunday Times 
 
'Magnificent' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

A classic, whose resonance deepens inside the reader in proportion to its austere, luminous discretion. Also, as it happens, a work of high, frequent comedy.  As an act of imagined history this novel has few rivals

A spellbinding piece of historical fiction-spare, luminous. . . . One starts rereading as soon as one has reached the last page

A magnificent recreation of the life of a medieval convent

Sylvia Townsend Warner's portrayal of a fourteenth-entury nunnery is widely considered to be one of the greatest historical novels of all time. An often hilarious ode to community living, it is also a poignant, delicate exploration of spirituality's relationship to the material world.

Summer Will Show

'A novel of love, war and death; brilliantly entertaining and far ahead of its time' Guardian 
 
'She is my husband's mistress - and here am I, taking her out to dinner' 
 
Sophia 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. 
 
'One of the great under-read British novelists of the twentieth century. This is my favourite of her novels' Sarah Waters 
 
'Every page contains something brilliant, arresting or amusing, and one comes away from it staggered' Claire Harman

Sylvia Townsend Warner has to be one of the great under-read British novelists of the twentieth century. This, my favourite of her novels, has a disaffected Victorian wife falling for her husband's charismatic mistress, and discovering revolutionary politics along the way

It's a wildly leftist novel of love, war and death; Townsend Warner chucks the lot into her simmering story, but it remains skilfully crafted. Brilliantly entertaining and far ahead of its time

With insight, malice, exquisiteness; in its wit, its instinct for style, its drawing-room urbanities, it will suggest at one time or another the work of a Rebecca West, a Virginia Woolf, an Elinor Wylie

The story of a young English aristocrat, who - cut adrift by tragedy - is led by her husband's former mistress deep into the fervour, chaos and bloodshed of the French revolution, Summer Will Show is a fearless and wildly entertaining tale of loss and self-discovery.

Lolly Willowes

'A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul' Guardian 
 
Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft. 
 
'The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever . . . It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom ... tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness' Helen Macdonald 
 
'Witty, eerie, tender ... her prose, in its simple, abrupt evocations, has something preternatural about it' John Updike

The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever is Lolly Willowes [. . .] Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness

Sylvia Townsend Warner moves with sombre confidence into the realm of the supernatural, and her prose, in its simple, abrupt evocations, has something preternatural about it

Lolly Willowes, always so gentle and accommodating, suddenly announces that she is moving, alone, to the countryside. To her overbearing family in London, it is a disturbing and inexplicable act of defiance. But Lolly will not be swayed, and in the depths of the English countryside she gradually discovers not only freedom and independence, but also, unexpectedly, her true vocation: witchcraft.

Sylvia Townsend  Warner

The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever is Lolly Willowes . . . Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness

A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul

Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Praise for Lolly Willowes

The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever is Lolly Willowes . . . Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness

A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul

My comfort read

The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever is Lolly Willowes . . . Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness

A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul

My comfort read

The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever is Lolly Willowes . . . Starting as a straightforward, albeit beautifully written family saga, it tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness

A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul

My comfort read

Books by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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