News
Latest journalism
Guardian Review, 29 March 2008: 'Lightning from Skies' - Sylvia Townsend Warner's chequered poetic career.
Sunday Telegraph, 15 March 2008: 'George Gissing's Grubby Life', review of George Gissing: A Life by Paul Delany.
Evening Standard, 3 March 2008: review of The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson.
TLS, 1 February 2008, 'Partiality and Prejudice': the young Jane Austen's surprising marginalia.
S Magazine (Sunday Express), 20 January 2008: short story, 'Terrible Trousers'.
Evening Standard, 14 January 2008: 'A Sideways Look at Milton', review of Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot by Anna Beer.
EVENTS
3 May 2008: Words & Music of Sylvia Townsend Warner. An anniversary concert of previously unperformed songs by Warner, featuring mezzo-soprano Nicola Beckley and pianist Simon Whalley. St Anne's College, Oxford.
7 May 2008: Live Poetry: A Celebration of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall, 8.00 pm. Admission free.
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17 June 2008: 'Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen conquered the world'; lecture to Friends of Farnham Museum, South Farnham School, Menin Way, Farnham, Surrey. Tickets £8.00 from 01252 715094
BOOKS
March 2008 New Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner
The New Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner will be published by Carcanet Press on 28 March. This is a significantly larger collection, with over 90 previously uncollected and unpublished poems, a new introduction, expanded notes and a chronology.
20 March 2008: Woman's Hour. A discussion of the poetry of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland. 10.00am, BBC Radio 4.
Forthcoming
My work-in-progress is Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World for Canongate Books (UK) and Henry Holt (US). It's a history of Austen's fame, the changing status of her work and what it has stood for, or been made to stand for, in English culture in the two hundred years since her death. Starting with Austen's own experience as a beginning author, her difficulties getting published and her determination to succeed, I explore the history of how her estate was handled by her brother, sister, nieces and nephews, the eruption of public interest in Austen in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the making of her into a classic English author in the twentieth century, the critical wars that erupted as a result and, lastly, her powerful influence on contemporary phenomena such as chick-lit, romantic comedy, the heritage industry and film. Part biography, part cultural history, it's a fascinating story, full of odd anecdotes and some new insights too.
‘Who's that Girl?’
Guardian Review, 12 March 2007 – an article about the auction in New York of the ‘Rice Portrait’, a disputed portrait of Jane Austen.
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