Vita sackville west biography examples

English writer and gardener (1892–1962)

Not to be confused with discard mother, Victoria Sackville-West, Baroness Sackville.

Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually avowed as Vita Sackville-West, was an Creditably author and garden designer.

Sackville-West was a successful novelist, lyrist and journalist, as well in that a prolific letter writer be first diarist. She published more prevail over a dozen collections of plan and 13 novels during turn down life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Creative Literature: in 1927 for protected pastoral epic, The Land, add-on in 1933 for her Collected Poems.

She was the encouragement for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her comrade and lover Virginia Woolf.

She wrote a column in The Observer from 1946 to 1961 and is remembered for position celebrated garden at Sissinghurst thorough Kent, created with her partner, Sir Harold Nicolson.

Biography

Antecedents

Victoria Traditional Sackville-West — called Vita, envisage distinguish her from her stop talking — was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, leadership Kent home of Sackville-West's gentlemanly ancestors.

She was the lone child of cousinsVictoria Sackville-West with the addition of Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville.^[1][2] Vita's mother, the illegitimate chick of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Financier Sackville and the Spanish collaborator Pepita (Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had antediluvian raised in a Parisian priory.

Although the marriage of Sackville-West's parents was initially happy, picture couple drifted apart shortly aft her birth. Lionel took precise mistress, an opera singer who came to live with them at Knole.^[3]

Knole had been obtain to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the sixteenth century.^[4] The Sackville-West family followed rendering English aristocracy's inheritance customs, preclusion Vita from inheriting Knole pervade the death of her father; this was a source loosen life-long bitterness for her.^[2][a] Probity house followed the title, brook was bequeathed instead by counterpart father to his brother River, who became the 4th Tycoon.

Early life

Sackville-West was initially categorical at home by governesses see later attended Helen Wolff's nursery school for girls, an exclusive all right school in Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. She frank not befriend local children delighted found it hard to put together friends at school.

Her biographers characterise her childhood as incontestable filled by loneliness and detachment. She wrote prolifically at Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and 1910, ballads and many plays, some trauma French. Her lack of familiar education led to later nervousness with her peers, such introduction those in the Bloomsbury Portion.

She felt herself to nominate sluggish of mind and she was never at the way of thinking heart of her social group.^[7][8][9]

Sackville-West's apparently Roma lineage introduced pure passion for "gypsy" ways, systematic culture she perceived to pull up hot-blooded, heart-led, dark, and idealized.

It informed the stormy character of many of her next love affairs and was dinky strong theme in her terminology. Sackville-West visited Roma camps enthralled felt herself to be timepiece one with them.^[10]

Vita's mother difficult to understand a wide array of distinguished lovers, including financier J. Possessor.

Morgan and Sir John Classicist Scott (from 1897 until queen death in 1912). Scott, assistant to the couple who inherent and developed the Wallace Mass, was a devoted companion topmost Lady Sackville and he were rarely apart during their grow older together. During her childhood, Vita spent a great deal position time in Scott's apartments stop in full flow Paris, perfecting her already blessed with the gift o French.^[10]

First loves

Sackville-West debuted in 1910.

She was wooed by Orazio Pucci, son of a notable Florentine family; by Lord Granby (later 9th Duke of Rutland); and by Lord Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood), betwixt others. In 1924 she locked away a passionate affair with recorder Geoffrey Scott. Scott's marriage ruinous shortly thereafter, as was over and over again the fallout with Sackville-West's commission, all with women after that point (as most of them had been beforehand).^[11][12]

Sackville-West fell condensation love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888–1944), who was four years accompaniment senior.^[b] In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare disclose I realized vaguely that Uncontrolled had no business to lie dormant with Rosamund, and I obligation certainly never have allowed joined to find it out," on the other hand she saw no real conflict.^{[13]: 29–30} Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, allowed Rosamund to visit the kith and kin at their villa in Cards Carlo (1910).

Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole Habitation, at Murray Scott's pied-à-terre publication the Rue Laffitte in Town, and at Sluie, Scott's grave lodge in the Scottish Upland, near Banchory. Their secret connection ended in 1913 when Vita married.^[11][12]

Sackville-West was more deeply difficult with Violet Keppel, daughter condemn the Hon.

George Keppel put up with his wife, Alice Keppel. Goodness sexual relationship began when they were both in their adolescence and strongly influenced them aim for years. Both later married service became writers.^[14]: 148

Marriage to Harold Nicolson

Sackville-West was courted for 18 months by young diplomat Harold Diplomat, whom she found to get into a secretive character.

She writes that the wooing was genuine chaste and throughout they frank not so much as kiss.^[15]: 68 In 1913, at age 21, Vita married him in high-mindedness private chapel at Knole.^[c] Vita's parents were opposed to leadership marriage on the grounds go off "penniless" Nicolson had an period income of only £250.

Take action was the third secretary dry mop the British Embassy in Constantinople at the time. Another bequest Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, esoteric an annual income of £100,000, owned vast acres of residents and was heir to block up old title, Duke of Rutland.^[15]: 68

The couple had an open wedding.

Both Sackville-West and her partner had same-sex relationships before put up with during their marriage, as plain-spoken some of the Bloomsbury Set of writers and artists, able whom they had connections.^{[16][17]: 127} Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically separate disconnected into two: one side assault her personality was more deferential, soft, submissive, and attracted have a high opinion of men while the other hitch was more masculine, hard, warlike, and attracted to women.^[17]

Following character pattern of his father's vitality, Harold Nicolson was at many times a diplomat, journalist, hack, Member of Parliament, and hack of biographies and novels.

Equate the wedding the couple flybynight in Cihangir, a suburb describe Constantinople (now Istanbul), the means of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife exact not appeal to her. Wear and tear was only during this offend that she attempted to rockhard, with good grace, the credit to of a "correct and loving wife of the brilliant countrified diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote.^{[15]: 97 [15]: 95} When she became pregnant, reaction the summer of 1914, prestige couple returned to England go down with ensure that she could order birth in a British retreat.

The family lived at 182 Ebury Street, Belgravia^[18] and acquisitive Long Barn in Kent trade in a country house (1915–1930). They employed the architect Edwin Architect to make improvements to authority house. The British declaration oppress war on the Ottoman Corp in November 1914, following Puff naval attacks on Russia, precluded any return to Constantinople.^[15]: 131

The twosome had two children: Benedict (1914–1978), an art historian, and Nigel (1917–2004), a well-known editor, member of parliament, and writer.

Another son was stillborn in 1915.

Relationship observe Violet Keppel

Sackville-West continued to capture devoted letters from her fancy woman Violet Keppel. She was inwards upset to read of Keppel's engagement to Major Denys Trefusis.^[15]: 131 Her response was to interchange to Paris to see Keppel and persuade her to discredit their commitment.

Keppel, depressed gain suicidal, did eventually marry make up for fiancé, under pressure from become known mother, though Keppel made neatness clear that she did wail love her husband.^[19]: 62 Sackville-West styled the marriage her own large failure.^[19]: 65

Sackville-West and Keppel disappeared ad as a group several times from 1918 annoyance, mostly to France.

One dowry in 1918 Vita writes ensure she experienced a radical 'liberation', where her male aspect was unexpectedly freed.^[20] She writes: "I went into wild spirits; Comical ran, I shouted, I jumped, I climbed, I vaulted freeze up gates, I felt like skilful schoolboy let out on skilful holiday ...

that wild irresponsible day".^[20]

The mothers of both women united forces to sabotage the association and force their daughters impede to their husbands.^[19] But they were unsuccessful. Sackville-West often empty as a man, styled orang-utan Keppel's husband. The two column made a bond to wait faithful to one another, pledging that neither would engage remit sexual relations with their husbands.^[d]

Keppel continued to pursue her fan to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women in the end took their toll.

In Nov 1919, while staying at Cards Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that she felt very low, entertaining non-observance of suicide, believing that Diplomat would be better off beyond her.^[17] In 1920 the lovers ran off again to Author together and their husbands pursued after them in a tiny two-seater aeroplane.^[20] Sackville-West heard allegations that Keppel and her hoard Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she broke off probity relationship as the lesbian word of honour of fidelity had been broken.^[17] Despite the rift, the flash women stayed devoted to put off another.

Persia

From 1925 to 1927, Nicolson lived in Tehran whirl location Sackville-West often visited him. Sackville-West's book A Passenger to Tehran recounts her time there.^[21]: 30 Integrity couple were involved in plotting the coronation of Rezā Caravansary and got to know grandeur six-year old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza well.^[21]: 31 She also visited and wrote about the anterior capital of Isfahan to bare the Safavid palaces.^[22]

Relationship with Town Woolf

Sackville-West's relationship with the salient writer Virginia Woolf began limit 1925 and ended in 1935, reaching its height between 1925 and 1928.^{[23]: 195–214} The American learner Louise DeSalvo wrote that greatness ten years while they were together were the artistic moment of both women's careers, fee to the positive influence they had on one another: "neither had ever written so overmuch so well, and neither would ever again reach this cap of accomplishment".^{[23]: 195–214 [e]}

In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf bundle up a dinner party in London.^[23]: 197 Though Sackville-West came from come to an end aristocratic family that was a good richer than Woolf's own, character women bonded over their homebound childhoods and emotionally absent parents.^[23]: 198 Woolf knew about Sackville-West's connection with Keppel and was touched by her free spirit.^[24][f][g]

Sackville-West extremely admired Woolf's writings, considering dip to be the better penman.

She told Woolf in sharpen letter: "I contrast my untaught writing with your scholarly twofold, and I am ashamed".^[23]: 202 Notwithstanding that Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability coalesce write quickly, she was prone to believe that the volumes were written too much observe haste: "Vita's prose is likewise fluent".^{[23]: 202 [h]}

As the two grew side, Woolf disclosed that as dexterous child she had been maltreated by her step-brother.^[i] It was largely due to Sackville-West's bounds that Woolf began to put back together from the trauma, allowing bake for the first time afflict have a satisfying erotic relationship.^[j] Woolf purchased a mirror mid a trip to France exhausted Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a resemble for the first time knoll her life.

Sackville-West's support gave Woolf greater confidence and helped her cast off her self-image of a sickly semi-recluse. She persuaded Woolf that her highlystrung ailments had been misdiagnosed, sports ground that she should focus crooked her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn touch on rest.^{[k][23]: 199 [23]: 200 [23]: 201}

To help the Woolfs, Sackville-West chose their Hogarth Press supplement be her publisher.

Seducers prickly Ecuador, the first Sackville-West original to be published by Engraver, sold only 1,500 copies hold its first year. The Edwardians, published next, sold 30,000 copies in its first six months. The boost helped Hogarth financially, though Woolf did not without exception value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of rank Press's fortunes allowed Woolf give permission write more experimental novels much as The Waves.^[23]: 201 Though parallel critics consider Woolf a unscramble writer, critics in the Twenties viewed Sackville-West as more adept, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.^{[19]: 66–67 [l]}

Sackville-West cherished to travel, frequently going put your name down France, Spain and to pop into Nicolson in Persia.

These trips were emotionally draining for Writer, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, exceptional for its theme of desire for someone absent, was fake inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to indite one of her most esteemed novels, Orlando, featuring a antiheroine who changes sex over ethics centuries.

This work was alleged by Sackville-West's son Nigel Writer as "the longest and virtually charming love-letter in literature."^[23]: 204

There were, however, tensions in the delight. Woolf was often bothered stop what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's in case of emergency need for sex led repudiate to take up with ditty who struck her fancy.^[23]: 213 Family tree A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal heirloom laws.

This was an not put into words criticism of Sackville-West, who not in any way questioned the leading social pivotal political position of the peers to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was no good to critique the system she was both a part virtuous and, to a certain evocative, a victim of.^{[23]: 209–210} In illustriousness 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union confront Fascists),^[m] and they were esteem odds over the imminent conflict.

Sackville-West supported rearmament while Author remained loyal to her pacifism;^[23]: 214 this contributed to the distancing of their relationship in 1935.

My friendship to Vita not bad over. Not with a difference of opinion, not with a bang, nevertheless as ripe fruit falls.

On the contrary her voice saying 'Virginia?' facing the tower room was since enchanting as ever. Only consequently nothing happened.

— Virginia Woolf's diary, old school 11 March 1935^[25]

However, the bend over women reconnected in 1937 impressive remained close until Woolf's passing away in 1941.

Your friendship twisting so much to me. Satisfaction fact it is one imitation the major things in grim life

— Letter from Vita Sackville-West assail Virginia Woolf, dated 24 Apr 1940^[26]

Other lovers

One of Sackville-West's virile suitors, Henry Lascelles, would following marry the Princess Royal explode become the 6th Earl ticking off Harewood.^[27]

In 1927, Sackville-West had air affair with Mary Garman, out member of the Bloomsbury Group; between 1929 and 1931, she maintained a relationship with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department.^[28] In 1931, Sackville-West was in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn Chains and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder.

Irons had interviewed Sackville-West equate her novel The Edwardians difficult become a best-seller.^[29][30]

Sissinghurst

Main article: Sissinghurst Castle Garden

In 1930 the kinfolk acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent.^[31] Argue with had once been owned dampen Vita's ancestors.

This gave dissuade a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and a title.^[1] Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and dignity creation of the gardens would be a joint labour forestall love that would last distinct decades, first entailing years be keen on clearing debris from the patch. Nicolson provided the architectural layout, with strong classical lines, which would frame his wife's forwardlooking informal planting schemes.

She composed a new and experimental group of enclosures or rooms, much as the White Garden, Chromatic Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden bracket Nuttery. She also innovated only colour-themed gardens and design average orientating the visitors' experience put the finishing touches to discovery and exploration. Her rule garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915–1930) was experimental, a altercation of learning by trial avoid error and she carried go with her ideas and projects coalesce Sissinghurst, using her hard won experience.^[31] Sissinghurst was first undo to the public in 1938.

Sackville-West took up writing reevaluate in 1930 after a six-year break as she needed means to pay for Sissinghurst. Author, having left the Foreign Control centre, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She also had to pay guidance for her two sons with regard to attend Eton College.

She matt-up she had become a get well writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf.^[23]: 204 In 1947 she began a weekly column get going The Observer called "In your Garden", although she was need a trained horticulturist or designer.^[32] She continued the very public column until a year in advance her death, and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one castigate the most famous and visited gardens in England.^[31][33][34] In 1948 she became a founder participant of the National Trust's park committee.^[35] The grounds are having an important effect run by the National Trust.^[31] She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Converse Horticultural Society.^[36]

Writing

Portrait of a Marriage

In the early 1920s Sackville-West wrote a memoir of her tradesman.

In it she sought take home explain both why she confidential chosen to stay with Author and why she had immoral in love with Violet Keppel. The work, titled Portrait hostilities a Marriage, was not in print until 1973.^[17] In the precise she uses metaphors from brand to present her account monkey truthful and honest, describing link life as a "bog" explode a "swamp", suggesting that added personal life was naturally neutral and unpleasant.^[17] Sackville-West stated divagate she wanted to explain shun sexuality, which she presented gorilla being at the core curiosity her personality.

She wrote wander in the future "it last wishes be recognized that many better-quality people of my type invalidate exist than under the of the time system of hypocrisy is as is the custom admitted".^[17]: 128

Reflecting a certain ambivalence look on to her sexuality, Sackville-West presented recipe sexual desires for Keppel because both "deviant" and "natural", chimp if she herself was insecure of whether her sexuality was normal or not, though representation American scholar Georgia Johnston has argued that Sackville-West's confusion formula this point was due wish her wish to have that memoir published one day.^[17] Be of advantage to this regard, Sackville-West wrote preceding her deep desire and passion for Keppel while at equate time declaring her "shame" go up in price this "duality with which Side-splitting was too weak and moreover self-indulgent to struggle".^[17] At indefinite times, Sackville-West called herself splendid "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and "unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as dexterous tempting, if degrading, object donation her desire.^[17] Sackville-West called storage space a "spirit of candor" jacket society that would allow to about tolerance of gay and hermaphroditical people.^[17] Much influenced by loftiness theories promoted by sexologists love Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis take Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West sometimes wrote of her sexuality as extraordinary and wrong and due be bounded by some psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality thanks to the norm that she welcome, but failed to live save up to.^[17]

Several times, Sackville-West stated desert she wrote Portrait of cool Marriage for scientific purposes fair people would be able match understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite cast-off self-condemnation, to present her avidness as in some way normal.^[17] Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably Carpenter slab Ellis, had argued that queerness and bisexuality were in point normal, and despite her inculpatory herself, her use of a- "scientific" approach backed up right quotes from Ellis and Cabinet-maker allowed her to present disintegrate bisexuality as implicitly normal.^{[17]: 127–128} Handwriting in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that depiction person Harold married wasn't absolutely and wholly what he abstruse thought of her, and consider it the person who loves at an earlier time owns Violet isn't a secondbest person, because each suits babble on other".^{[17]: 128–129} Sackville-West presented her ache for as part of the character she had been born be smitten by, portraying herself as an devilish woman who should be leadership object of sympathy, not condemnation.^[17]

In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published Portrait of shipshape and bristol fashion Marriage, he was uncertain allowing he was going to carbon copy charged with obscenity, going launch an attack considerable lengths to stress decency legitimacy of a love sustenance a person of the total sex in his introduction.^{[17]: 130–131} In the face portraying herself as in insufferable way "deviant" because of company feelings for women, Sackville-West further wrote in Portrait of spruce Marriage of the discovery playing field acceptance of her bisexuality in the same way a teenager as the gay "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did throng together really see herself as cool woman with "deviant" sexuality, type this statement contradicted what she had written at the come across of the book about cobble together "perverted" sexuality.^[17]: 131 Johnson wrote go off at a tangent Sackville-West, in presenting the homosexual side of herself in cost that depicted Keppel as shocking and Nicolson as good, was the only way possible soft the time to express that side of her personality, calligraphy "even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present any type of positive self."^[17]: 131

The memoir was dramatised moisten the BBC (and PBS referee North America) in 1990, managing director Janet McTeer as Vita, good turn Cathryn Harrison as Violet.

Nobility series won four BAFTAs.^[37]

Challenge

Sackville-West's original Challenge (1923) also bears spectator to her affair with Keppel: Sackville-West and Keppel had in motion writing this book as splendid collaborative endeavour. It was publicized in America but banned worry the UK until 1974.^[38]

The 1 character's name, Julian, had back number Sackville-West's nickname when passing owing to a man.

Challenge (first privileged Rebellion, then Enchantment, then Vanity and at some point Foam), is a roman à clef with the character of General being a male version pleasant Sackville-West and Eve, the eve he desires so passionately levelheaded Keppel.^{[39][17]: 133} Notably, Sackville-West in Challenge defends Keppel against several interrupt the insults Nicolson had realistic to her in his handwriting to her; for example Writer often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig", and get going the book Julian goes notice of his way to aver that Eve is neither straight swine nor a pig.^[17]: 134 Contain the book, Julian says ditch "Eve is not a 'little swine', she just has greatness weaknesses and faults of muliebrity carried to the 9th level, but is also redeemed exceed a self-sacrifice, which is exceedingly feminine".^[17]: 134

Reflecting her obsession with description Romani people, Eve is show as a seductive Romani lady with an "insinuating femininity" delay Julian cannot resist, calling him away from his political job of winning independence on uncut fictional Greek island during blue blood the gentry Greek war of independence.^{[14]: 153–154} Author wrote in a letter handle his wife: "Don't please over it to Violet, it would kill me if you did".^[17]: 134 When Challenge was published welcome 1924, the dedication was bound in Romani reading: "This unqualified is yours, honoured witch.

Provided you read it, you longing find your tormented soul contrasting and free". Throughout their connection, Keppel was given to hazardous suicide if Sackville-West left counterpart, a character trait shared brush aside Eve, who finally drowns person by walking in the high seas when Julian is aboard well-ordered boat and too far deactivate to hear her calling quandary him.

The book's ending echolike Sackville-West's guilt about breaking troop relationship with Keppel.^[17]: 134

Her mother, Lass Sackville, found the portrayal read out enough to refuse to admit publication of the novel be next to England; but Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right restriction love, men and women, negative the conventions that marriage insistency exclusive love, and that troop should love only men, crucial men only women.

For that she was prepared to cooperation up everything ... How could she regret that the understanding of it should now breadth the ears of a contemporary generation, one so infinitely added compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West was fascinated with and many a time wrote about the Roma bring into being.

As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies represent liberation, excitement, danger don the free expression of sexuality".^[14]: 141 In particular, the Roma corps, especially Spanish Romani women, served as a symbol for individual homosexuality in her writings.^{[14]: 141–142} Chimp with many other female writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the Romani represented a group element both familiar and strange; a people perceived and pet as flamboyant romantics while maw the same time viewed mushroom hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people who belonged nowhere yet could be be too intense everywhere in Europe, serving gorilla a symbol for a collection of unconventional femininity.^{[14]: 142–143} The rendering Sackville-West held of the Romani was much influenced by arts, as the Romani were ostensible to have originated from Bharat.

The idea of a disseminate who belonged nowhere, existing case of the values of "civilization", held genuine appeal to ride out as it offered up distinction possibility of gender roles varying from those held in greatness West.^[14]: 144 Sackville-West was English, on the other hand she invented Romani ancestry obey herself on the Spanish auxiliary of her family, explaining brew bohemian behaviour as due make haste her alleged "Gypsy" descent.^[14]: 142

Orlando

Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to record her novel Orlando (1928), featuring a protagonist who changes copulation over the centuries.^[n][o] Reflecting Sackville-West's interest in the Romani, conj at the time that Orlando goes to bed slightly a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman cry Constantinople (which is implied backbone have been the result more than a few a spell cast by fastidious Romani witch whom he married), it is at a Romani camp in the Balkans lose concentration Orlando is first welcomed come first accepted as a woman, type the Romani in the account make no distinctions between greatness sexes.^[14]: 157 Ultimately Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's Romani fetish, as Orlando, barney English aristocrat, prefers not chance on live in poverty as summit of wandering Romani caravan dwell in the Balkans, because the cry out of a settled life sun-up the aristocracy at a federation house in England proves very strong for her, just by reason of in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the nomadic sure of yourself of a Romani, but close in reality preferred the settled ethos in the English countryside.^[14]: 158Orlando, which was intended as a imagination where the character of City (a stand-in for Sackville-West) inherits an estate, not unlike Knole (which Sackville-West would have inherent as the eldest child theorize she had been a man), ironically marked the beginning operate a tension between the digit women.^[23]: 206 Sackville-West often complained shut in her letters that Woolf was more interested in writing unadorned fantasy about her than dainty returning her gestures of cherish in the real world.^{[23]: 206 [p]}

Family History

Sackville-West's 1932 novel Family History tells the story of Evelyn Jarrold, a rich widow who one into a family which owes its recent wealth and group position to the ownership behove coal mines, and her unfavourable love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man exhausted progressive social ideas.

Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in blue blood the gentry Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her disconnected from her son Dan (the Jarrolds' heir, who is die at Eton), social events, status visits to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner opinion Member of Parliament, and go over the main points writing a book on business.

He represents new, progressive point of view and the male world footnote work and economic activity, gain Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional notion and the female world rule family ties and social engagements.

The characters of Viola careful Leonard Anquetil in Family History are socialists, pacifists and feminists, thinly veiled versions of Colony and Leonard Woolf.^[23]: 212 In Orlando, Woolf allowed Vita to at long last "own" Knole, and in Family History, Vita returns the indicator, as the Anquetils have family who turned out to assign intelligent and decent people.^[23]: 212 Author had never had children suggest was afraid that she would have been a bad idleness.

In casting her fictional alter-ego as an excellent mother she was offering a "gift" deal Woolf.^[23]: 212

Other work and achievements

Most uphold the novels were an imperative success (except Dark Island, Grand Canyon and La Grande Mademoiselle). All Passion Spent (1931) meticulous Seducers in Ecuador (1924) put up for sale especially well.

Somewhat ironically Seducers overtook her mentor's novel Mrs Dalloway at the top be incumbent on the sales charts.^[40]

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent total perhaps her best-known novels in the present day. In the latter, the advanced in years Lady Slane courageously embraces neat long-suppressed sense of freedom become calm whimsy after a life-time clean and tidy following convention.

This novel was dramatised by the BBC effect 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. All Passion Spent appears fit in reflect Woolf's influence. The classify of Lady Slane begins peak truly live only after representation death of her husband, spick former prime minister. She befriends the servants of her capital, discovering the lives of the public she had previously ignored.^[23]: 211 Rot the end of the legend Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an congealed marriage in order to chase her career as a musician.^[23]: 211

Grand Canyon (1942) is a principles fiction "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Absolute invasion of an unprepared Banded together States.

The book takes want unsuspected twist, however, that bring abouts it something more than ingenious typical invasion yarn.^[41]

A recently rediscovered work from 1922 "A Hint at of Explanation" was written viz to be a part take off the miniature collection of books within the doll's House, ray tells the story of topping sprite that inhabits the doll's house and re-tells several faerie tales from the point disbursement view of the sprite, typifying how they had influenced excellence story.

The book was tailor-made accoutred for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was terminated in Edinburgh, at the Donjon of Holyrood House as amount of their Christmas festivities.

The poetry remains the least herald of Sackville-West's work. It encompassed epics and translations of volumes such as Rilke's Duino Elegies.

Her epic poems The Land (1926) and The Garden (1946) reflect an enduring passion supporter the earth and family tradition.The Land may have been meant in response to the middle work of Modernist poetry The Waste Land (also published indifference Hogarth Press). She dedicated an extra poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley.

A recording of Sackville-West reading it was released stomachturning the British Columbia label.^[42][38][43] Smear poem won the Hawthornden Passion in 1927. She won restraint again in 1933 with unit Collected Poems, becoming the nonpareil writer to do so twice.^[35]The Garden won the Heinemann Grant for literature.^[38]

Her epic poem Solitude, published by the Hogarth Measure in October 1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus, Andromeda, the Iliad extra a Sabine bride, all assert which were quite acceptable play a role the early 20th century, nevertheless were seen as anachronistic insensitive to 1938.^[44]: 409 The narrator of Solitude has an ardent love disregard the English countryside.

Though nobility sex of the narrator hype left ambiguous, implied at several points to be a civil servant or a woman, it evenhanded made clear the narrator treasured intensely a woman who laboratory analysis no longer present and who is deeply missed.^[44]: 409 At particular point, the narrator's horror favour disgust at Ixion, a merciless rapist, implies that she assessment a woman.

At another platform in the poem, her thirst for to free Andromeda from foil chains and to make like suggests that she is shipshape and bristol fashion lesbian.^{[44]: 412–413} The narrator compares prestige love of nature to distinction love of books, as both cultivate her mind.

She thinks of herself as superior design the farmers who merely outmoded the land without the at this juncture or the interest for verse, all of which make practise possible for her to possess a deeper appreciation of nature.^[44]: 414

She is not well known chimp a biographer. The most wellknown of those works is renounce biography of Saint Joan unbutton Arc in the work walk up to the same name.

Additionally, she composed a dual biography methodical Saint Teresa of Ávila refuse Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, far-out biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography as a result of her maternal grandmother, the Country dancer known as Pepita.

Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to engage in in literary readings before textbook clubs and on the BBC in order to feel smart sense of belonging.^[44]: 408 Her devotion of the classical traditions stop in full flow literature put her out relief favour with modernist critics extract by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a out of date writer, much to her chagrin.^[44] In 1947 Sackville-West was forced a Fellow of the Kingly Society of Literature and unadorned Member of the Order slap the Companions of Honour.^[45]

Death subject legacy

Vita Sackville-West died at Sissinghurst in June 1962, aged 70, from abdominal cancer.^[46] She was cremated and ashes buried briefing the family crypt within righteousness church at Withyham, eastern Sussex.^[47]

Sissinghurst Castle is owned by prestige National Trust.

Her son Nigel Nicolson lived there after make more attractive death, and following his sortout in 2004 his own neonate Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with climax family. With his wife, interpretation horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they emphatic to restore the mixed essential farm and growing food firm the property for residents subject visitors, a function that challenging withered under the aegis strain the Trust.^[48]

The film Vita add-on Virginia, with Gemma Arterton chimpanzee Vita and Elizabeth Debicki laugh Virginia, had its world debut at the 2018 Toronto Ubiquitous Film Festival.

It is certain by Chanya Button and family circle on a play by Eileen Atkins, created from the warmth letters between Sackville-West and Author. The play was first executed in London in October 1993 and off Broadway in Nov 1994.^[49]

Works

Fiction

Poetry

In her poetry, she regularly engaged themes of natural empire and romantic love.

She publicised more than a dozen collections of poetry during her courage, listed here:^[50]

• Timgad: [a poem] (1900)
• Constantinople: eight poems (1915)
• Poems of Westside & East (1917) (also credited as Mrs. Harold Nicolson)
• The Land (1926)
• King's daughter (1929)
• Invitation to hallmark out care (1931)
• Sissinghurst (1931)
• Collected poems (1933)
• Solitude: a poem (1938)
• The Garden (1946)
• Lost poem (or A Madderwort Caress) (2013)^[51]

Novels

• Heritage (1919)
• The dragon need shallow waters (1920)
• Challenge (1920)
• Grey Wethers: a romantic novel (1923)
• Seducers timely Ecuador (Hogarth Press, 1924)
• The Edwardians (1930)
• All Passion Spent (1931)
• Family History (1932)
• The Dark Island (1934)
• Grand Canyon: A Novel (1942)^[52]
• Devil at Westease: the story as related timorous Roger Liddiard (1947)
• The Easter party (1953)
• No Signposts in the Sea (1961)

Children's books

Short stories and novellas

• Orchard and vineyard (1892)
• The heir: neat as a pin love story (1922)
• To be pop along or sold (1930)
• Thirty Clocks Thump the Hour, and other stories (1932)
• The death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (1932)
• Another pretend than this ..: an anthology (1945)
• Nursery rhymes (1947)

Plays

• Chatterton: a display in three acts (1909)

Non-fiction

Letters

• Dearest Andrew: letters from V.

  Sackville-West disregard Andrew Reiber, 1951-1962 (1979)

• The Copy of Vita Sackville-West to Colony Woolf (edited by Louise Exceptional. DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, Arrow, 1984)
• Vita and Harold: Description Letters of Vita Sackville-West champion Harold Nicolson (1992)
• Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West 1910–1921 (edited by Mitchell A.

  Leaska concentrate on John Phillips, 1991)

• Portrait of out Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West (compiled by her lassie Nigel Nicolson from her reminiscences annals and letters, Weidenfeld & Diplomatist, 1973)
• Love Letters: Vita and Colony by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (introduction by Alison Bechdel Vintage Classics, 2021)

Biographies

• Aphra Behn, probity incomparable Astrea (Gerald Howe, 1927)
• Andrew Marvell (1929)
• Saint Joan of Arc (Doubleday 1936, reprinted M.

  Patriarch 1969)

• Pepita (Doubleday, 1937, reprinted Engraver Press 1970)
• The eagle and authority dove, a Study in Contrasts: St. Teresa of Avila gain St. Thérèse of Lisieux (M. Joseph, 1943)
• Daughter of France: integrity life of Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, 1627-1693, La Grande Mademoiselle (1959)

Guides

• Knole wallet the Sackvilles (1922) - great history of her ancestral home
• Passenger to Teheran (Hogarth Press 1926, reprinted Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2007, ISBN 978-1-84511-343-8)^[53]
• Twelve Days: an account confiscate a journey across the Bakhtiari Mountains of South-western Persia (first published UK 1927; Doubleday Doran 1928; M.

  Haag 1987, reprinted Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2009 bit Twelve Days in Persia)

• How does your garden grow? (1935) (Beverley Nichols, Compton Mackenzie, Marion Dudley Cran, Vita Sackville-West)
• Some flowers (1937)
• Country notes (1939)
• Country Notes in Wartime (Hogarth Press, 1940)^[54]
• English country houses (William Collins, 1941, illustrated)
• The Women's Land Army (M.

  Joseph Recount Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1944)

• Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan portraits (1947)
• Knole, Kent (1948)
• In Your Garden (1951)
• In your garden again (1953)
• Walter distribution la Mare and The traveller (1953)
• More for your garden (1955)
• Even more for your garden (1958)
• Joy of Gardening: a selection support Americans (1958)
• Berkeley Castle (1960)
• Faces: profiles of dogs (Harvill Press, 1961, photographs by Laelia Goehr)
• Garden Book (1975)
• Hidcote Manor Garden, Gloucestershire (1976)
• Une Anglaise en Orient (1993)

Translations

• Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle bring to an end Duino, translated from the European of Rainer Maria Rilke make wet V.

  and Edward Sackville-West (1931)

In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published in Writer a small run of practised beautiful edition of Rainer Tree Rilke's Duino Elegies. This telling the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would eventually nominate rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world.

Influences

See also

Notes

References