Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel, Lolly Willowes; or, The Loving Huntsman (1926), was the first selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, her second novel, Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927), an early selection of the Literary Guild. In spite of such an auspicious beginning as a popular novelist, Warner's next five novels received only cursory reviews. Readers more likely will recognize her name as a short-story writer. She contributed 144 stories to the New Yorker from 1936 until her death in 1978 and produced ten collections of short stories. A critical assessment of her fiction has not been made, though there have been some appreciative essays, such as John Updike's, on her short stories. The republication of Lolly Willowes, with an introduction by Anita Miller, by Academy Chicago Limited in 1979 indicates, however, that Warner's fiction may be worthy of a closer look.

Warner was born in Harrow, Middlesex, England, the daughter of a Harrow House master...