SOURCE: Yardley, Jonathan. “Of Love's Fortunes and Misfortunes.” Washington Post Book World 18, no. 51 (18 December 1988): 3.

In the following favorable review of Selected Stories, Yardley maintains that however diverse Warner's stories “may be in tone and settings, her stories are all noteworthy for their graceful, witty prose and their tough, uncompromising intelligence.”

The stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner, as collected in this generous volume [Selected Stories], defy categorization if not description. Warner, who died a decade ago at the age of 85, was a British writer whose styles and subjects varied widely; she seems to have been intimidated by nothing and to have been willing to attempt anything. Though the fortunes and misfortunes of love are principal themes in her work, she treats them in everything from realistic stories about middle-class British life to fairy tales set in a realm of her own imagining, the Kingdoms of Elfin; but however diverse...