Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner

David Trotter

doi:10.14324/111.444.stw.2020.21

Abstract

The aim of this article is to establish the critical significance and value of work which was the product of the unique creative partnership developed by Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner during the 1930s. During that period, I argue, they imagined more variously and more incisively together, through mutual awareness and acceptance, than they would in all likelihood have done had they never met and fallen in love. An understanding of the sharp differences in temperament, outlook and reputation which precluded full-scale collaboration freed each of them, in turn, to pursue contrasting aspects of concerns held in common. So adventurous was that pursuit, at times, that it merits comparison with recent investigations of the idea of the ‘posthuman’. Since Warner was by far the more prolific author, I have tried to balance my account of her partnership with Ackland by drawing extensively not only on published fiction and poetry, but also on diaries and letters, and on a variety of other kinds of material from the archive.

Highlights

The aim of this article is to establish the critical significance and value of work which was the product of the unique creative partnership developed by Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner during the 1930s
A preliminary reading of much of this material suggested that the customary approaches to the literature of the 1930s, entirely justifiable in their own terms, will not do justice to its adventurousness
The adventures undertaken by Ackland and Warner in the 1930s often had to do with technology, or animals, or both

Summary

Introduction

A preliminary reading of much of this material suggested that the customary approaches to the literature of the 1930s, entirely justifiable in their own terms, will not do justice to its adventurousness. Keywords Valentine Ackland; Sylvia Townsend Warner; the 1930s; collaboration; the posthuman; aeroplanes; guns.

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Conclusion