This day course will look at Warner’s life, loves and affiliations. She was a writer of great imaginative scope and variety, encompassing fiction, poetry, journalism, biography and an excellent, still very readable, guidebook to Somerset (1946). We shall pay particular attention to some of her poems and to the novel, Lolly Willowes, which established her name in 1926 as an original, witty and sometimes subversive writer. She lived most of her adult life with her partner, Valentine Ackland, near the Dorset coast where she combined a rural existence with an unorthodox public presence.

The Tutor will provide texts for reading on the day, but if you have the time, please read the novel Lolly Willowes in advance (Penguin Modern Classics, pub. 2020 or any other copy).