Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist, poet and musicologist, known for works such as Lolly Willowes, The Corner That Held Them, and Kingdoms of Elfin.

Her paternal grandfather, The Reverend George Townsend Warner was headmaster of Newton Abbot Proprietary College in Devon where he had taught Arthur Quiller Couch, Bertram Fletcher Robinson and Percy Fawcett.

It was at Powys' home that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet; the two women fell in love, moving in together in 1930 and eventually settling at Frome Vauchurch, Dorset, in 1937.

[5] Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party, and Marxist ideals found their way into Warner's works.

Warner participated in the II International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, held in Valencia between 4 and 17 July 1937, while serving in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War.

From 1917 she was in regular employment as one of the editors of Tudor Church Music,[8] ten volumes published by Oxford University Press in the 1920s with the support of the Carnegie UK Trust.

[9] The lead editor was initially Sir Richard Terry, who as the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, had been a pioneer in the revival of Tudor vocal repertoire.

Warner obtained the work as the protegee of her lover and music teacher Sir Percy Buck, who was on the editorial committee.

[13] Warner's novels included Lolly Willowes (1926), Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), Summer Will Show (1936), and The Corner That Held Them (1948).

[16] The critical and personal hostility that greeted the jointly authored Whether a Dove or a Seagull in 1933 effectively put an end to the public poetic careers of both Warner and Ackland.

[12] Although Warner never wrote an autobiography, Scenes of Childhood was compiled after her death on 1 May 1978 at age 84, based on short reminiscences published over the years in the New Yorker.