The Element of Lavishness

An instant classic in the literature of friendship: the witty, affectionate 40-year correspondence between a great story-writer and her editor . . . pleasure and delight.

In July 1938, William Maxwell, then twenty-nine years old and the acting poetry editor of The New Yorker, wrote to Sylvia Townsend Warner inviting her to send him verse. Miss Warner, forty-four and famous for her novel Lolly Willowes, had recently begun writing stories for the magazine, antic, inimitable sketches of English life that Maxwell adored. The poems were sent, and a remarkable friendship was begun.