The first Book of the Month Club selection is published - March 10th, 1926

On this day in 1926, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s debut novel, Lolly Willowes, was published by Viking Press.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that flips through the pages of history to deliver
old news in a new way. I'm Gabelusier, and today
we're taking a closer look at the inaugural selection of

(00:21):
the Book of the Month Club. It's a bold and
subversive novel about escaping the constraints of expectation and fair warning,
there are spoilers ahead. The day was March tenth, nineteen
twenty six. Sylvia Townsend Warner's debut novel, Lolly Willows was

(00:46):
published by Viking Press. The British author received quite a
shock one month later when her novel was announced as
the first ever selection of the newly minted Book of
the Month Club. It was an unexpected choice, not only
because Warner was an unknown author, but because the subject
matter of her book was rather unconventional for the era.

(01:09):
The novel's full title is Lolly Willows or the Loving Huntsman,
and it's basically a satirical comedy of manners about escaping
the patriarchy, befriending the devil, and becoming a witch. The
story is centered on an unmarried middle aged woman named
Laura Willows and her quest for personal freedom. After spending

(01:31):
twenty years as the live in aunt to her brother's children,
Laura feels suffocated by the expectations of her family and
of society at large. To them, she is an old maid,
someone who has been rescued from the shame of being alone,
and must now earn her keep through the endless toil
of housekeeping and childcare around the house. The family calls

(01:53):
her Aunt Lolly, a mispronunciation of Aunt Laura, which was
coined by her young niece and then opted by everyone else.
To Laura, the cutesye name becomes a symbol of her
subservient status. The Laura Willows of her youth is gone.
Now there is only Aunt Lollie. However, at age forty seven,

(02:14):
something inside Laura snaps. She finds herself dreaming of a
new life and a place she's never been, and decides
on pure impulse to move to the small country village
of Great Mop. Her extended family is of course against
the idea, but Laura is determined at last to act
in her own interest. She leaves London, rents a cottage

(02:37):
and begins wandering the countryside in search of something unknown
that seems to be calling out to her. Unfortunately, her
search is interrupted when her nephew Titus decides to join
her in Great mop Although he means well, Titus's presence
begins to alienate Laura from herself and from her new surroundings.

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With a family member and such close pity, she starts
to fall back into her old role as Aunt Lolly.
Feeling stifled all over again, she goes for a walk
in the forest one evening and cries out for help.
She begs to be released from her duties, from the
expectations of people who love her but don't really know her.

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In the moments that follow, she feels ananimate power in
her midst a silent force that makes her feel as
if quote surely a compact had been made and the
pledge irrevocably given. In the days ahead, Laura's suspicion is
soon confirmed. She has made a deal with the devil
and is now a witch in training. The prospect doesn't

(03:41):
scare her, though, in fact, it makes her feel safe
and at peace. She envisions Satan as a loving huntsman,
someone who seeks out lost souls like herself, not to
devour them, but to liberate them. It doesn't take long
for the spell to work its magic and quick succession.
Titus is plagued by everything from spoiled milk to writer's

(04:03):
block to swarms of flies, bats, and stinging wasps. Finally,
the nephew decides to leave Great Mop altogether, freeing his
aunt once more from familial obligations. The book ends with
Laura and Satan on a hillside, enjoying a nice long talk.
He asks nothing of her, because for him, the chase

(04:25):
is everything. Once a target submits, he leaves at b
and moves on to his next pursuit. So even though
Laura has sold her soul, she now feels more ownership
of it than ever before. As she tells her loving
Huntsman quote, one doesn't become a witch to run around
being harmful, or to run around being helpful, either a

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district visitor on a broomstick. It's to escape all that,
to have a life of one's own, not an existence
doled out by others. Charitable refuse of their thoughts, so
many ounces of stale bread of life a day. Instead,
she argues, women become witches quote to show our scorn
of pretending life's a safe business to satisfy our passion

(05:11):
for adventure. In Warner's novel, Witchcraft represents something that sits
outside of the binary of good and evil. It's the
space and freedom to be one's self without worry or
regard for other people's hang ups, a necessity for personal
development that is often denied to women, whether intentionally or not.

(05:32):
Warner was in her early thirties when she wrote Lolly Willows.
She was on her way to becoming a musicologist at
the time, but was known to dabble in poetry and
fiction writing whenever she came across a piece of paper
with a quote particularly tempting surface. That happened increasingly often
in the nineteen twenties, when Warner served as an editor

(05:52):
for an ongoing musicology project. In the course of her duties,
she helped collect and edit a ten volume work composed
most of Elizabethan church music, which until then had only
existed in handwritten form. The project often provided her with
leftover pieces of smooth, heavy manuscript paper, perfect for scribbling
down a poem or short story. One day, Warner happened

(06:16):
upon a quote very agreeable, thin lined paper, onto which
she began to pen the story of a contemporary witch.
One line led me to another, she later explained, one
smooth page to the next. The finished book was quickly
accepted for publication, establishing what Warner described as her accidental career.

(06:39):
One of the earliest milestones in that fifty year long
accident was her novel becoming the inaugural selection of the
Book of the Month Club. Still active today, the club
is now the longest running book subscription service in the
United States. In nineteen twenty six, though it was the
unproven business venture of an advertising copywriter named Harry shirt

(07:00):
he conceived of the club as a way to save
readers both time and money. Instead of taking a chance
on an expensive book that might not be very good,
customers could join the club and receive an affordable copy
of a carefully chosen book each month. Sherman had long
term plans for the club, believing it could become a
brand unto itself. He later explained his intentions saying, quote,

(07:25):
the club establishes itself as a sound selector of good
books and sells by means of its own prestige. Thus,
the prestige of each new title need not be built
up in advance before becoming acceptable. To meet this goal,
Sherman assembled a panel of judges to select the books
that would be sent out to all the club's members.

(07:46):
The committee's first selection was Warner's recently published first novel,
Lolly Willows. In April of nineteen twenty six, a special
hardcover copy of the book, printed on cheaper paper, was
dispatched to each of the club's four thousand or so members.
When asked about it later, Warner said, quote, I was astonished, delighted,

(08:07):
and confident that any organization daring enough to pick an
unknown author would be a valuable asset to contemporary literature.
The club's selection committee may have been daring, but its
members apparently were not. Many readers expressed disapproval of the novel,
finding a defensive, salacious, or even blasphemous. Imagine then, how

(08:30):
much more scandalized they would have been if they'd also
known the author was bisexual. The fact didn't become publicly
known until a few years later, when Warner was introduced
to the love of her life, an English poet named
Valentine Acland. Although their relationship was tumultuous at times, they
stayed together for thirty nine years until Valentine's death in

(08:52):
nineteen sixty nine. Would members of the Book of the
Month Club have liked Lolly Willows more if they'd known
it was written by a queer author. Probably not, but
for more open minded readers it adds another layer of
contexts to the book's themes, including the subversion of societal
norms and the need for women's empowerment. Warner's chilly reception

(09:15):
by the Book of the Month Club did install her
career in the slightest. She went on to publish one
hundred and forty four short stories in The New Yorker
and wrote six more novels, all of which were filled
with what she called quote the oddness of the world
and the surprisingness of mankind. She also wrote several volumes
of poetry, including one co authored with her partner. In addition,

(09:38):
Warner translated the work of Marcel Proust and wrote a
biography of the novelist THH. White. After a long and
productive life, Sylvia Townsend Warner passed away at her home
in Dorset, England, on May first, nineteen seventy eight, at
the age of eighty four. As for the Book of
the Month Club, it eventually became the prestige brand that

(10:00):
Sherman had envisioned, and boasted one and a half million
subscribers at its peak in nineteen eighty eight. Over time, though,
the advent of the internets and big chain bookstores sent
the club into decline. It's shut down completely in twenty fourteen,
but was relaunched a year later and is still going
strong today. In its latest incarnation, the Book of the

(10:22):
Month Club no longer bills itself as a prestige brand,
but simply as a quote, fun and reliable way to
learn about new releases. The club hasn't completely forgotten its roots, though.
In twenty sixteen, it launched a new Book of the
Year award, named, fittingly enough, the Lali. I'm Gabe Bluesier

(10:45):
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more
about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments
or suggestions, feel free to send them my way by
writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to

(11:06):
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again soon for another day
in history class.