The classics series is chock-full of witches. And what better time to look in on them than during the week leading up to Halloween?
First up is one of the very first books in the series (the fifth, to be exact).
Who: Lolly Willowes aka Laura Willowes, gentle, resigned, and slightly batty spinster
Where: Lolly can be found in the eponymous book by Sylvia Townsend Warner and dancing at a witch's sabbath in Great Mop, the Chilterns
Why: At 47, Lolly packs up and moves out of her brother's house, stating: "Nothing is impracticable for a single, middle-aged woman with an income of her own"
How: Once in her new home, witchcraft finds her
How she explains it: "If she had been called upon to decide in cold blood between being an aunt and being a witch, she might have been overawed by habit and the cowardice of compunction. But in the moment of election, under the stress and turmoil of the hunted Lolly as under a covering of darkness, the true Laura had settled it all unerringly. She had known where to turn.... She was a witch by vocation. Even in the old days of Lady Place the impulse had stirred in her. What else had set her upon her long solitary walks, her quests for powerful and forgotten herbs, her brews and distillations?"
More at Forgotten Classics and the Guardian book blog
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