T H White

‘A small masterpiece which may well be read long after the writings of its subject have been forgotten’ (The New York Times, 1967)

‘By the highest standards this is a fine biography’ (Times Literary Supplement, 1967)

‘A splendidly intuitive appreciation’ (Robert Nye, The Guardian, 1967)

‘White’s perfect biographer … the portrait she draws … is not only unmistakeably right, but one of the finest portraits of an artist in many years’ (The New Yorker, 1968)

Sylvia Townsend Warner was born in 1893. Her father, George Townsend Warner, was a history master at Harrow School, and Warner was educated first by her mother Eleanor and then her father. She had access to her father’s considerable library as well as his expertise as a historian and as a teacher, and as a meticulous stylist in both writing and speech. This meant that she received an excellent education, escaping formal educational disciplines and the influence of the state. She excelled at music, and considered studying composition with Schopenhauer. In 1917 she was appointed to the editorial committee of the Tudor Church Music Project, on which she worked for twelve years. In 1925 she published her first collection of poems, and her first novel in 1926, Lolly Willowes, which became a Book of the Month in the US and has never been out of print. She continued to publish poetry alongside novels and short stories. Later in life, she also translated from the French, and in 1967 she published her biography of T H White. She met her lifetime companion Valentine Ackland in 1929, with whom she would live devotedly until Ackland’s death in 1969. She had a distinguished career and was a highly respected literary figure, and her long collaboration with The New Yorker ensured some financial stability. She died in 1978, a year after the publication of her collection Kingdoms of Elfin. She lived in the village of Frome Vauchurch in Dorset.