Full name: The Element of Lavishness: Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1938-1978

Author: Sylvia Townsend Warner Year: 2000 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Biographies, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781582431185 1582431183

An instant classic in the literature of friendship: the witty, affectionate 40-year correspondence between a great story-writer and her New Yorker editor. For forty years, until her death in 1978, Sylvia Townsend Warner (poet, novelist, and short-story writer) and her New Yorker editor William Maxwell (himself a fiction writer of great distinction) exchanged more than 1,300 letters. Their formal relationship quickly grew into a real, unshakable love, and their letters back and forth became the most significant and longest-lasting correspondence of their lives. As Maxwell told the editor of these letters, "Sylvia needed to write for an audience, a specific person, in order to bring out her pleasure in enchanting," and Maxwell was that person, both as editor and as correspondent. Warner brought out the best in Maxwell too. "I suspect that of all the writers I edited, I was most influenced by Sylvia...I think that what you are infinitely charmed by you can't help unconsciously imitating. " In these letters they wrote about everything that amused, moved, and perplexed them-the physical world, personal relationships, the New York City blackout, the Cuban missile crisis, their ceaseless reading, the coming of old age. Gratitude and love are on every page. Not to mention pleasure and delight. Similar books: The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh by Nancy Mitford Vita and Harold by Vita Sackville-West The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy by Shelby Foote Screams from the Balcony by Charles Bukowski Love from Nancy by Nancy Mitford The Letters of Kingsley Amis by Kingsley Amis Letters of Note by Shaun Usher Too Brief a Treat by Truman Capote Decca by Jessica Mitford Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller by Lawrence Durrell Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka The Amazing Book is Not on Fire by Dan Howell The Adventurous Eaters Club by Misha Collins Code Complete by Steve McConnell Destiny of Souls by Michael Newton The Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins Firefly by Joss Whedon Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe Refactoring by Martin Fowler