Largely neglected for many years, the past two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in Sylvia Townsend Warner from literary historians drawing on feminism and queer theory, yielding some groundbreaking readings of her work. However, this recent scholarship has not taken account of her archive, instead largely relying on William Maxwell's and Claire Harman's heavily-edited published correspondence and diaries, volumes that systematically downplay Townsend Warner's commitment to and involvement in Communism. For instance, the letter I cite in the Introduction remains unpublished in full, no doubt because of the clear, troubling allegiance to Communism it displays. In this 1937 letter to a prominent fellow Communist Townsend Warner calls for Stephen Spender to be ejected from the CPGB, and that they should “make it look like a purge.” Even though the term primarily denoted expulsion from the Party rather than execution as it is commonly taken to mean today, this is shocking language indeed; but a full consideration of Townsend Warner's life and work in the 1930s must surely take into account the extent of her commitment to Soviet Communism.

The first challenge faced by any attempt to re-evaluate Townsend Warner's politics in the 1930s is therefore archival. The problem is twofold: first, the extent to which published editions of Townsend Warner's letters and diaries paint a misleading picture of her life and work in this period, for very obviously anti-Communist reasons (Wendy Mulford's excellent critical biography is an exception to this tendency); and, second, the sheer scope and size of her archive at the Dorset County Museum. Accordingly, this chapter takes shape from the most salient letters and diary entries that have been excised from William Maxwell's and Claire Harman's published editions. Paying particular attention to those texts which bear, as Maxwell remarks, “the irritating tone of the newly converted,” or, to put it more charitably, the boldest statements of Communist commitment, I reconstruct Townsend Warner's cultural politics in the 1930s from a series of redacted or excised documents of her political allegiances and affiliations. I have paid particular attention to an extensive series of letters sent to two close friends and fellow CPGB members, Julius and Queenie Lipton, which barely feature at all in the published edition of the letters and which provide a particularly rich account of intimate, everyday political commitment.