Lolly Willowes: Penguin Modern Classics

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Apr 2021 · Penguin Classics · Narrated by Olivia Darnley

About this audiobook

Brought to you by Penguin.

Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft.

'The book I'll be pressing into people's hands forever . . . It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom ... tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness' Helen McDonald

'Witty, eerie, tender ... her prose, in its simple, abrupt evocations, has something preternatural about it' John Updike

'A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul' Guardian

© Sylvia Townsend Warner 1926 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

About the author

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) grew up in rural Devonshire before moving to London and writing her debut novel, Lolly Willowes (1926). With her partner Valentine Ackland, she was active in the Communist Party and served in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War. Her novels include Mr Fortune's Maggot, The True Heart, Summer Will Show, After the Death of Don Juan, The Corner That Held Them and The Flint Anchor.