…by Sylvia Townsend Warner, as a result of this article. I am loving it, the prose and the mood. Here is a quote from it that reminds me a bit of Tove Jansson:
Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience, a something that was shadowy and menacing and yet in some way congenial; a something that lurked in waste places, that was hinted at by the sound of water gurgling through deep channels and by the voices of birds of ill-omen. Loneliness, dreariness, aptness for arousing a sense of fear, a kind of ungodly hallowedness—these were the things that called her thoughts away from the comfortable fireside.