ABSTRACT
Is it possible for an author to be too delightful? In Claire Harman's excellent biography of the English novelist and short-story writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, published in 1989, there is a remarkable photograph of Warner in be-whiskered old age: laughing, intelligent eyes shining out behind huge, comical horn-rimmed spectacles, man's jacket, stub of cigarette held gaily in hand, a charming rakish smile. It is precisely the sort of image—so happy, leering and indomitable—that makes one want to run away screaming and hide one's head under a pillow.
