SOURCE: Steinman, Michael. Introduction to The Elements of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978, edited by Michael Steinman, pp. xv-xxvii. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2001.

In the following essay, Steinman considers The Elements of Lavishness a testament to the true friendship between Warner and editor William Maxwell.

Between 1938 and 1978, the inimitable writers Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell exchanged more than thirteen hundred affectionate and witty letters. Their at first formal relationship—he was Mr. Maxwell, the New Yorker fiction editor; she was Miss Warner, the distinguished contributor from Dorset—soon deepened into “a real, unshakable love.” Twenty years after Warner's death Maxwell told me, “I still remember the pleasure of walking into the apartment and finding a letter from her on the hall table.” The Element of Lavishness celebrates that pleasure, part of the larger pleasure both writers shared equally—the pleasure of writing...