Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) was a British author who wrote poetry, short stories, and novels, among other things, including a biography of T. H. White. I have a collection of letters between Warner and William Maxwell, an editor at the New Yorker, to which Warner submitted poetry and short stories. They were both terrific writers, and I enjoy dipping in and out of the book. But other than that, I knew nothing of Warner’s writings.

So, I was surprised when I found the book Lolly Willowes in the classics section at Reedmor Books, where I work. It is a new release of Warner’s first novel, originally published in 1926, and I bought it on the spot.

The straightforward narrative in this short novel’s first two parts, the story of Laura Willowes’s rather enchanted childhood and then her stifled life as spinster aunt in her brother’s London home—where a niece unfortunately decides to call her Lolly—rolls along easily, Warner’s prose style deceptively simple. But she has some breathtaking lines. For example, when Laura’s father is ill and nurses are brought in to tend to him: “They came, and their starched white aprons looked to her like unlettered tombstones.” Of course, a few sentences later, Laura’s father dies.

I call this “deceptively simple” because Warner builds great tension into the London section without resorting to dramatic declarations, unruly emotions, or the like. We come to understand that Laura does feel stifled, and that for years has tamped down, every autumn, an urge toward the unconventional. Midway through Part II, she gives in to the urge and leaves her brother’s home to live in a village in a hilly part of England, northwest of London. She embraces a new way of living, a new self, until at the end of Part II, when a favorite nephew writes that he’s coming to live in the same village.

Laura does not want to return to conventional life in any way, so she makes a deal with the devil. Part III is a fun ride as Laura welcomes another new identity as a witch. I regret that Warner connected witches to Satan. Of course, she wrote the book in the 1920s, when the church-prompted idea that witches are evil and aligned with the devil probably was still predominant. Warner may also have enjoyed the challenge of creating this character, or felt he was a necessary foil for Laura. For toward the end of the book, Laura lectures Satan on the plight of women. It’s a grand lecture:

“When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. … There they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes … I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust is age … For so many, what can there be but witchcraft? … They know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are.”

As I said, a straightforward narrative told in a deceptively simple prose style with an unexpected and empowering explosion at the end. In a new introduction to this edition, Alix E. Harrow recommends reading the book in the autumn, with a candle lit, with a window open, for there are witches among us. I simply recommend you read it.