A reissued biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner from the acclaimed author of Charlotte Bronte Claire Harman turns her skilled and thoughtful biographer's eye to Sylvia Townsend Warner. Sylvia Townsend Warner was a twentieth century English novelist, poet and active member of the Communist party in Britain. also spent time as a musicologist and composer and lived the majority of her adult life in an opening homosexual relationship with her lover, Valentine Ackland. This biography makes use of her previously unpublished diaries, as well as those of Valentine, to draw an intimate and lively picture of an extraordinary twentieth century woman.