META NAME="Forgotten Classics" CONTENT="neglected novels forgotten authors."

forgotten classics

'Reading neglected writers so you don't have to' A Time Out column and a blog for books that seem to be undeservedly forgotten, from John Galsworthy to Rose Macaulay, from Amos Tutuola to DH Lawrence, from W. Somerset Maugham to Fanny Burney. What books do you think we should revive? If you love a writer who has lapsed in popularity please let me know! Are my choices controversial?

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Lolly Willowes


I have just finished my column about Warner’s Lolly Willowes. I’ll post a longer version in a couple of weeks after it is published. It really is a great novel, and deserves more attention (you can buy the latest (if 10 years old) Virago edition on Amazon, there’s a search box below, hinthint). Warner, too, is someone that deserves a whole lot more attention. She was a lesbian communist biographer poet novelist, who also wrote a guidebook to Somerset. What a great lady. Her seven novels are relatively easy to find in libraries or booksites. She also wrote a large number of short stories.

 

She was for a long time the lover of Valentine Ackland, a relatively unconsidered poet and another worthy of our attention. They wrote poems together, publishing Whether a Dove or Seagull in 1934 (an article about Ackland is here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1778230,00.html and one of her lovely poems is here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/poetry/story/0,,1778987,00.html).

 

 

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