- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (7 Oct 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1853815020
- ISBN-13: 978-1853815027
- Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 19.7 x 1.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 249,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Lolly Willowes (Virago Modern Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers' HERMIONE LEE 'A novel as original in its conception as it is subtle and refined in its artistry ... LOLLY WILLOWES retains all of the charm and all of the 'relevance' it owned years ago' TLS 'Witty, eerie, tender' JOHN UPDIKE, NEW YORKER 'She has a talent amounting to genius' ROSAMOND LEHMANN
Book Description
Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel, published in 1926, is magical and subversive, anticipating the ficton of writers like Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was Townsend Warner's first novel, and it's a striking one, which by all accounts caused quite a stir when it first appeared in 1926. The innocent-sounding title, and the quasi-Victorian, Gilbert-and-Sullivanish subtitle "Or, The Loving Huntsman" are deliberate attempts to lead the reader up the garden path. For the Loving Huntsman is none other than the Devil himself, to whom maiden aunt Lolly Willowes has sold her soul for a bit of peace and quiet.
Laura Willowes, known to friends and family as Aunt Lolly, is the youngest child and only daughter of brewery owner and doting father Everard, with whom she lives a happy, bookish existence until his sudden death when she is twenty-eight. She moves in with her brother and sister-in-law in London, who treat her with well-meaning condescension as a sort of unpaid nanny: "Henry and Caroline did all they could to prevent her feeling unhappy. If they had been overlooking some shame of hers they could not have been more tactful, more modulatory." Friends and family are unanimous in considering the Lolly problem settled. A few years later, however, she astonishes them all by renting a cottage in the obscure Bedfordshire village of Great Mop, where she intends to stay alone. But all is not as it seems there: the village community seems strangely closed, and there are odd goings-on by moonlight. None of this greatly troubles Lolly, who relaxes into a gentle nature mysticism. However, when her family begin inviegling for her return to London, she finds that there is no option but to invoke supernatural assistance...
Don't be misled into expecting a Gothic tale, however: although the book is undoubtedly quietly subversive (even nowadays), there is never any doubt that Lolly intends no real harm to anyone; and all ends satisfactorily for everyone involved. The Devil is a surprisingly gentle character when he makes his unexpected personal appearance towards the end of the book; really more Pan than Satan. (Townsend Warner was never afraid of bringing big names into her narratives: Queen Victoria has a similarly unexpected cameo role in "The True Heart".) John Updike has succinctly summarised this book as "witty, eerie, tender": like several of Townsend Warner's novels, it is an indefinable, genre-breaking work, and is unlikely to be much like anything you've read before.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'With a chilling immediacy this book speaks today, as it did in 1925, for women. Not only women like Laura who are incapable of loving men, but for all those who have been "subdued" into ladyhood, or dwindled into wives. Women were strongly concerned with their status during the first forty years of this century. Now, after a sleep of twenty years, they, like Lolly Willowes, are awake again, seeking for lives of their own...Lolly Willowes...is the witty, eerie, tender but firm life history of a middle-class Englishwoman who politely declines to make the expected connection with the opposite sex and becomes a witch instead' -- John Updike, THE NEW YORKER
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'd just like to add a little bit to existing reviews, all of which are interesting and have merit. The end of the book, though, is a lot darker than it might seem. Unhappy, pigeon-holed Lolly does escape from her suffocating (though well-meaning) family, and she is pleased. I should not give too much away, but it is fair to say that her escape, to say the least, takes an unconventional form. She is happy on the whole, and certainly feels liberated, but there is plenty of evidence in the book to suggest that she has in fact entered a new (and perhaps much more sinister) kind of thralldom, indeed that she has not so much made as move as been drawn or led into her new existence without understanding why (though she does in the end). This book is the work of a highly accomplished writer who uses whimsy and acerbic wit with remarkable skill (it was her first novel), but in the end it is a jeu d'esprit and not, in my view, entirely successful at that. Having said that, there are many more consistently successful books which are less fun to read!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
...a hind couched in the devil's coverts...
The vast majority of this book is about Lolly Willowes living as the proverbial maiden aunt in the bosom of her family, in her eldest nephew's house. Read more
Published 19 days ago by Eileen Shaw
Gentle Witch
The story of Laura Willowes who (belives she has) sold her soul to the devil in return for freedom from her tiresome family. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Dr. S. W. Snow
Delightful
Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel and one of her best. It has the sort of subtlety that you don't see too much of these days and sparkles with flashes of wit and perception. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mr. P. I. Browne
Brilliant Book
Lolly Willows is definitely a read for anyone who is looking to explore fiction between the two world wars.... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mrs. Esme Collins
Gothic
A book that I feel was well ahead of its times, Lolly is a spinster who depends on her brothers and their wives to maintain her lifestyle. Read more
Published on 27 Aug 2008 by kehs
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