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Sylvia Townsend Warner's Letters to Genevieve Taggard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

In september 1941, shortly before the united states entered world war ii, the british writer sylvia townsend warner wrote a note to the American poet Genevieve Taggard, thanking her for sending a poem. An epistolary relationship developed between the two writers, though Taggard also sent material gifts of spices, tea, rice, and seeds to alleviate the deprivations that Warner and her partner, Valentine Ackland, faced in war-battered England. Eighteen letters, all from Warner to Taggard, remain of this correspondence, which ended with Taggard's death in 1948. They are housed in Taggard's papers at the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. Although Taggard's letters to Warner have been lost, Warner's letters to Taggard reveal a literary friendship that is at once partisan and poetic. These private letters, like the public “Letter from London” columns by Warner's fellow New Yorker contributor Mollie Panter-Downes, vividly portray the English home front to an American audience.

Type
Little-Known Documents
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Modern Language Association of America

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References

Works Cited

Beer, Gillian. “Sylvia Townsend Warner: ‘The Centrifugal Kick.‘Women Writers of the 1930s: Gender, Politics, and History, edited by Joannou, Maroula, Edinburgh UP, 1999, pp. 7686.Google Scholar
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Works Cited

Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus, 1989.Google Scholar
Laurence, Elizabeth. Letter to Genevieve Taggard. 8 July 1948. Genevieve Taggard Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, box 15, folder 31. Typescript.Google Scholar
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