In July 1938, William Maxwell, then twenty-nine years old and the acting poetry editor of The New Yorker, wrote to Sylvia Townsend Warner inviting her to send him verse. Miss Warner, forty-four and famous for her novel Lolly Willowes, had recently begun writing stories for the magazine, antic, inimitable sketches of English life that Maxwell adored. The poems were sent, and a remarkable friendship was begun.