- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"simple", "value"=>".3 linear foot (one box)"}
- unitid
-
{"value"=>"MssCol 3225", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"3225", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1937-1977", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1937/1977"}
- date_inclusive_start
-
1937
- date_inclusive_end
-
1977
- keydate
-
1937
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Sylvia Townsend Warner letters"}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"The <span class=\"corpname\">New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.</span> <div class=\"address\"> <span class=\"addressline\">5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, New York 10018-2788</span></div>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"Collection consists of Warner's letters to the American composer Paul Nordoff (1909-1977). Letters concern personal matters with occasional discussions of their artistic work and references to prominent acquaintances."}
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"<p>Sylvia Townsend Warner Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Warner, Sylvia Townsend, 1893-", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was born on December 6, 1893, in Devonshire, England, the only child of George Townsend Warner, a schoolmaster, and Nora Huddleston Warren. Educated at home, she moved to London in 1917 to pursue a career in musicology, serving as one of the editors of the ten-volume study Tudor Church Music. At the same time, she maintained an interest in writing poetry and fiction; her first novel, Lolly Willowes, was published in 1926. It was followed by Mr. Fortune's Maggot in 1927.</p> <p> It was also in 1927 that Warner met Valentine Ackland (1906-1969), an aspiring writer. In 1930, they became life partners, eventually settling permanently in the village of Frome Vauchurch, Dorset, in 1937. Throughout the 1930s, they continued to work on their writing: Warner's short stories began to appear in The New Yorker (which would eventually publish more than 140 of them), while Ackland contributed to such periodicals as The Daily Worker and New Masses, both women having joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1935.</p> <p> After attending the American Writers' Conference in New York in 1939, Warner and Ackland returned home in October, following Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Warner joined the Women's Volunteer Service, establishing rest centers for evacuees from the cities. Her published writing between 1939 and 1945 included an anthology of short stories, The Cat's Cradle Book (1940) and A Garland of Stars (1943).</p> <p> The years immediately following the war were difficult ones for Warner, marked by her mother's increasing senility and eventual death in 1949, and by Valentine's ongoing affair with an American woman. Ackland eventually returned to Warner in 1949, and the next fifteen years were relatively tranquil for them both. During that time, Warner produced more than half a dozen books, including a translation of Proust and a biography of the novelist T. H. White.</p> <p> In 1967, Ackland learned that she had breast cancer; after a long struggle with the disease, she died in 1969. Warner, then in her mid-70s, continued to mourn her for the remainder of her life, though she found some solace in her garden and her much-loved cats. In her last years, she also enjoyed a resurgence of interest in her work, especially among feminist scholars.</p> <p>Increasingly troubled by arthritis and deafness, Warner became bedridden early in 1978. She died on May 1 of that year.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>During her 1939 visit to the United States, Warner met the American composer Paul Nordoff (1909-1977), who had written an opera based on Mr. Fortune's Maggot two years earlier. Though the two were to see each other fewer than a dozen times throughout their lives, a deep friendship developed between them, carried out largely through their correspondence over the next four decades.</p> <p> The 237 letters in this collection are from Warner to Nordoff.At this writing, we do not know the location of Nordoff's letters to Warner, if they have survived. Their content ranges from humorous and original descriptions of commonplace events and activities to more painful accounts of the occasional strains in Warner's relationship with Valentine, and her warm, commiserative responses to the conflicting feelings evidently expressed by Nordoff in his letters concerning his bisexuality and his marriage. There are also occasional discussions of their artistic work, and scattered references to prominent acquaintances such as Ralph Vaughan Williams.</p> <p> About forty-five of these letters, or excerpts from them, appeared in a published anthology of Warner's correspondence, edited by William Maxwell. Interfiled with a number of the letters are annotated photocopies of them, possibly used in compiling the anthology.</p>"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The letters are contained within one box and are arranged chronologically.</p>"}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Purchased from Bart Auerbach, Ltd., New York, 1993</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Laura K. O'Keefe; machine-readable finding aid created by Melanie A. Yolles.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Laura K. O'Keefe; machine-readable finding aid created by Melanie A.\n Yolles</p>"}
- date_start
-
1937
- date_end
-
1977