Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: The Akeing Heart : Passionate Attachments and their Aftermath : Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Elizabeth Wade White
Location
At the center of Sylvia’s emotional life was Valentine Ackland with whom she shared her life from 1930 until Valentine’s death. In 1938 their friendship and mentoring role with Elizabeth Wade White transformed when she and Valentine began an intense affair. In differing forms this lasted for over 10 years although Valentine did not leave Sylvia nor Sylvia renounce her. Elizabeth kept several hundred letters, notes, and journal entries relating to the affair and her friendships with “S&V” in their mentoring years. Her cousin, Peter Haring Judd, has published an edition of them, The Akeing Heart: Passionate Attachments and their Aftermath: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Elizabeth Wade White (2013). This adds greatly to our understanding of these relationships and their effect on Sylvia; it makes available for the first time her eloquent and incisive letters. His talk will include many of the hotographs found in the papers.
Peter Haring Judd is the author of several prize-winning books on family history, and holds PhD from Columbia University. Elizabeth’s papers are in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL.