British writer, a translator, poet, short story writer and novelist. Warner began her self-proclaimed “accidental career” as a poet after she was given paper with a “particularly tempting surface.” She wrote her first novel, “Lolly Willowes,” 1926, because she “happened to find very agreeable thin lined paper in a job lot.” Her work is praised for wit and whimsical charm, with an elegant use of language.
The only child of George Townsend Warner, a schoolmaster, and Nora Huddleston Warren, Sylvia was educated privately. She originally intended to follow a career as a musicologist and did become an authority on early English music, working as one of the editors of the ten-volume Tudor Church Music, 1923-29, and a contributor to Grove’s Dictionary of Music.
Warner went on to the publication of some 144 short stories that appeared in The New Yorker magazine and her output included collections of short fiction, novels, poetry and biography, including the semi-autobiographical “Scenes of Childhood,” posthumously published in 1981. Her novels include “The True Heart,” 1929, “The Flint Anchor,” 1954 and her final collection, “Kingdoms of Elfin,” 1977.
In 1927, Warner met Valentine Ackland (1906-1969), an aspiring writer, and in 1930, they became life partners, eventually settling permanently in the village of Frome Vauchurch, Dorset, in 1937. Both women had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1935. After losing Ackland to breast cancer, 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 later years, a resurgence of interest in her work, especially among feminist scholars, gave her a great deal of satisfaction.
Increasingly troubled by arthritis and deafness, Warner became bedridden early in 1978, dying on May 1 of that year, Maiden Newton, Dorset, England. “I’ll Stand By You,” a collection of love letters between her and Ackland, was published in 1999.
Link to Wikipedia biography