Bid to cement writer's legacy through £48k appeal

A charity is trying to raise £48,000 to catalogue the archive of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Dorset Archives Trust said its work would increase appreciation of the novelist, poet and LGBTQ+ pioneer, who died in 1978 at the age of 84.

It has launched an initial appeal to raise £25,000 by the end of June.

The archive consists of 85 boxes of records, including diaries, letters and photographs, which were collected by Dorset Museum and Art Gallery.

Warner spent much of her life living in Frome Vauchurch, Dorset, with her partner, the poet Valentine Ackland.

The charity said: "To many, they were brave and unconventional, living as a couple through an era when societal perspectives on same-sex relationships could be anything but tolerant."

In December, campaigners unveiled a statue of Warner in Dorchester, showing her seated on a bench with a cat at her feet.

Dorset Archives Trust said the new online catalogue would "open up new lines of inquiry and research into one of Dorset and the UK's literary treasures".

Warner's comparatively low profile in English literature belies her considerable literary success.

Her debut novel Lolly Willowes (1926) was a best-seller and she had more than 150 short stories published in the New Yorker magazine.

The trust said her "status and reputation have grown in recent years", following the statue campaign, as well as republication of her novels and radio adaptations.