Kingdoms of Elfin (Handheld Fantasy Classics, 3)

Endorsed by Neil Gaiman and Greer Gilman, this new edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner's final collection of short stories brings her fantasy writing to a new readership. Originally published in The New Yorker, and in book form in 1977 these sixteen sly and enchanting stories of Elfindom show Warner's consummate mastery of realist fantasy that recalls the success of her first novel, the witchcraft classic Lolly Willowes (1926). Warner explores the morals, domestic practices, politics and passions of the Kingdoms of Elfin by following their affairs with mortals, and their daring flights across the North Sea. The Kingdoms of Broceliande in France, Zuy in the Low Countries, Gedanken in Austria and Blokula in Lappland entertain Ambassadors, hunt with wolves and rear changelings for the courtiers' amusement. The fairy ruling classes are charming and insolent, and all levels of fairy society are heartless, in human terms. But love and hate strike at fairies of all ranks, as do poverty, abandonment and the passions of the heart. Enter Elfindom with care.

About the Author

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) was a British feminist and modernist novelist and poet, and lived for most of her life in Dorset with her lover, the poet Valentine Ackland. She was the daughter of George Townsend Warner, a history master at Harrow School, and Eleanor Mary Townsend Warner, née Hudleston, who with her husband educated her daughter at home. Initially a musicologist, Sylvia was appointed to the editorial committee of the Tudor Church Music Project in 1917, on which she worked for twelve years. She published her first collection of poems, The Espalier, in 1925, and her first novel in 1926, Lolly Willowes, which became a Book of the Month in the US. In 1930, at the age of 37, Warner moved in with and became the lover of the poet Valentine Ackland, the woman who would become the love of her life. Sylvia and Valentine, like many anti-fascists of the period, joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1935. During the Spanish Civil War they joined a Red Cross unit and were active in the 1937 International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture. Sylvia continued to publish poetry alongside novels and short stories. Later in life, she also translated from the French, and in 1967 she was commissioned to write her acclaimed biography of the English writer T H White. She maintained a distinguished career, and her long collaboration with The New Yorker ensured some financial stability. She died in 1978, a year after the publication of Kingdoms of Elfin.Ingrid Hotz-Davies is Chair of English Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Tübingen. Her most recent research publications have been about gender performativity and modern women’s writing.

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