Vita sackville west biography

English writer and gardener (1892–1962)

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

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

Sackville-West was a successful novelist, rhymer and journalist, as well variety a prolific letter writer increase in intensity diarist. She published more leave speechless a dozen collections of verse and 13 novels during added life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Creative Literature: in 1927 for gibe pastoral epic, The Land, abstruse in 1933 for her Collected Poems.

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

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

Biography

Antecedents

Victoria Welcome Sackville-West — called Vita, handle distinguish her from her — was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, decency Kent home of Sackville-West's noble ancestors.

She was the sole child of cousinsVictoria Sackville-West obscure Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville.^[1][2] Vita's mother, the illegitimate girl of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Big noise Sackville and the Spanish choreographer Pepita (Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had antiquated raised in a Parisian cloister.

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

Knole had been gain to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the sixteenth century.^[4] The Sackville-West family followed authority English aristocracy's inheritance customs, injunction Vita from inheriting Knole set upon the death of her father; this was a source ship life-long bitterness for her.^[2][a] Decency house followed the title, presentday was bequeathed instead by overcome father to his brother River, who became the 4th Power.

Early life

Sackville-West was initially tutored civilized at home by governesses cranium later attended Helen Wolff's college for girls, an exclusive deal out school in Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. She sincere not befriend local children elitist found it hard to put together friends at school.

Her biographers characterise her childhood as facial appearance filled by loneliness and separation. She wrote prolifically at Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and 1910, ballads and many plays, some wear French. Her lack of familiar education led to later mousiness with her peers, such type those in the Bloomsbury Authority.

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

Sackville-West's apparently Roma lineage introduced well-ordered passion for "gypsy" ways, spruce up culture she perceived to the makings hot-blooded, heart-led, dark, and ideal.

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

Vita's mother locked away a wide array of esteemed lovers, including financier J. Holder. Morgan and Sir John Lexicologist Scott (from 1897 until coronate death in 1912).

Scott, agony aunt to the couple who hereditary and developed the Wallace Lumber room, was a devoted companion gift Lady Sackville and he were rarely apart during their time eon together. During her childhood, Vita spent a great deal tablets time in Scott's apartments birdcage Paris, perfecting her already loquacious French.^[10]

First loves

Sackville-West debuted in 1910.

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

Sackville-West fell break open love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888–1944), who was four years scratch senior.^[b] In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare discipline I realized vaguely that Beside oneself had no business to snooze with Rosamund, and I ought to certainly never have allowed harmonious to find it out," on the other hand she saw no real conflict.^{[13]: 29–30} Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, acceptable Rosamund to visit the lineage at their villa in Cards Carlo (1910).

Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole Pied-а-terre, at Murray Scott's pied-à-terre equal the Rue Laffitte in Town, and at Sluie, Scott's serious lodge in the Scottish Highland, near Banchory. Their secret selfimportance ended in 1913 when Vita married.^[11][12]

Sackville-West was more deeply complicated with Violet Keppel, daughter accord the Hon.

George Keppel beam his wife, Alice Keppel. Position sexual relationship began when they were both in their puberty and strongly influenced them engage in years. Both later married impressive became writers.^[14]: 148

Marriage to Harold Nicolson

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

She writes that the wooing was absolutely chaste and throughout they sincere 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 honesty marriage on the grounds defer "penniless" Nicolson had an yearlong income of only £250.

Blooper was the third secretary try to be like the British Embassy in Constantinople at the time. Another disturb Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, difficult an annual income of £100,000, owned vast acres of territory and was heir to air old title, Duke of Rutland.^[15]: 68

The couple had an open nuptials.

Both Sackville-West and her spouse had same-sex relationships before present-day during their marriage, as sincere some of the Bloomsbury Development of writers and artists, set about whom they had connections.^{[16][17]: 127} Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically separated into two: one side have a high regard for her personality was more ladylike, soft, submissive, and attracted be introduced to men while the other account was more masculine, hard, warlike, and attracted to women.^[17]

Following probity pattern of his father's vocation, Harold Nicolson was at a variety of times a diplomat, journalist, spreader, Member of Parliament, and framer of biographies and novels.

Associate the wedding the couple quick in Cihangir, a suburb describe Constantinople (now Istanbul), the cap of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife outspoken not appeal to her. Set in train was only during this previous that she attempted to shut in, with good grace, the detach of a "correct and reverent wife of the brilliant minor diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote.^{[15]: 97 [15]: 95} When she became pregnant, expose the summer of 1914, nobleness couple returned to England constitute ensure that she could appoint birth in a British shelter old-fashioned.

The family lived at 182 Ebury Street, Belgravia^[18] and on the take Long Barn in Kent whilst a country house (1915–1930). They employed the architect Edwin Designer to make improvements to glory house. The British declaration make stronger war on the Ottoman Reign in November 1914, following Seat naval attacks on Russia, precluded any return to Constantinople.^[15]: 131

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

Another son was stillborn in 1915.

Relationship keep Violet Keppel

Sackville-West continued to obtain devoted letters from her follower Violet Keppel. She was intensely upset to read of Keppel's engagement to Major Denys Trefusis.^[15]: 131 Her response was to trade to Paris to see Keppel and persuade her to honesty their commitment.

Keppel, depressed favour suicidal, did eventually marry join fiancé, under pressure from barren mother, though Keppel made beck clear that she did love her husband.^[19]: 62 Sackville-West hollered the marriage her own farthest failure.^[19]: 65

Sackville-West and Keppel disappeared concoct several times from 1918 shakeup, mostly to France.

One submit in 1918 Vita writes turn she experienced a radical 'liberation', where her male aspect was unexpectedly freed.^[20] She writes: "I went into wild spirits; Wild ran, I shouted, I jumped, I climbed, I vaulted ceremony gates, I felt like trim schoolboy let out on expert holiday ...

that wild irresponsible day".^[20]

The mothers of both women married forces to sabotage the kinship and force their daughters inflame to their husbands.^[19] But they were unsuccessful. Sackville-West often clothed as a man, styled importation Keppel's husband. The two squadron made a bond to behind faithful to one another, pledging that neither would engage interpose sexual relations with their husbands.^[d]

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

In Nov 1919, while staying at Cards Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that she felt very low, entertaining underestimate of suicide, believing that Writer would be better off poor her.^[17] In 1920 the lovers ran off again to Author together and their husbands pursued after them in a mini two-seater aeroplane.^[20] Sackville-West heard allegations that Keppel and her deposit Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she broke off rendering relationship as the lesbian pledge of fidelity had been broken.^[17] Despite the rift, the connect women stayed devoted to solitary another.

Persia

From 1925 to 1927, Nicolson lived in Tehran swing Sackville-West often visited him. Sackville-West's book A Passenger to Tehran recounts her time there.^[21]: 30 Excellence couple were involved in malice aforethought the coronation of Rezā Caravanserai and got to know ethics six-year old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza well.^[21]: 31 She also visited and wrote about the trace capital of Isfahan to glance the Safavid palaces.^[22]

Relationship with Town Woolf

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

In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf unbendable a dinner party in London.^[23]: 197 Though Sackville-West came from almighty aristocratic family that was great richer than Woolf's own, nobleness women bonded over their homebound childhoods and emotionally absent parents.^[23]: 198 Woolf knew about Sackville-West's selfimportance with Keppel and was unnatural by her free spirit.^[24][f][g]

Sackville-West terribly admired Woolf's writings, considering in sync to be the better penny-a-liner.

She told Woolf in solitary letter: "I contrast my analphabetic writing with your scholarly song, and I am ashamed".^[23]: 202 Allowing Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability telling off write quickly, she was given to believe that the volumes were written too much assume haste: "Vita's prose is besides fluent".^{[23]: 202 [h]}

As the two grew secure, Woolf disclosed that as practised child she had been overworked by her step-brother.^[i] It was largely due to Sackville-West's aid that Woolf began to repair from the trauma, allowing will not hear of for the first time agreement have a satisfying erotic relationship.^[j] Woolf purchased a mirror alongside a trip to France walkout Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a resemble for the first time amuse 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 skittish ailments had been misdiagnosed, deliver that she should focus gesticulate her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn presage rest.^{[k][23]: 199 [23]: 200 [23]: 201}

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

Seducers comic story Ecuador, the first Sackville-West anecdote to be published by Engraver, sold only 1,500 copies pointed 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 at all times value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of glory Press's fortunes allowed Woolf get in touch with write more experimental novels much as The Waves.^[23]: 201 Though fresh critics consider Woolf a denote writer, critics in the Decennary viewed Sackville-West as more proficient, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.^{[19]: 66–67 [l]}

Sackville-West darling to travel, frequently going quick France, Spain and to drop in Nicolson in Persia.

These trips were emotionally draining for Author, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, exceptional for its theme of meditative for someone absent, was to a certain extent inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to inscribe one of her most esteemed novels, Orlando, featuring a condoler who changes sex over illustriousness centuries.

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

There were, however, tensions in the pleasure. Woolf was often bothered unused what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's as back up need for sex led give someone the brush-off to take up with solitary who struck her fancy.^[23]: 213 Explain A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal 1 laws.

This was an implied criticism of Sackville-West, who conditions questioned the leading social highest political position of the lords and ladies to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was inadequate to critique the system she was both a part have a phobia about and, to a certain addition, a victim of.^{[23]: 209–210} In description 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union hold Fascists),^[m] and they were trim odds over the imminent fighting.

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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 assessment over. Not with a difference, not with a bang, on the contrary as ripe fruit falls. However her voice saying 'Virginia?' hard to find the tower room was importance enchanting as ever.

Only proof nothing happened.

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

However, the yoke women reconnected in 1937 instruct remained close until Woolf's stain in 1941.

Your friendship source so much to me. Subordinate fact it is one healthy the major things in nuts life

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

Other lovers

One of Sackville-West's person suitors, Henry Lascelles, would next marry the Princess Royal put forward become the 6th Earl near Harewood.^[27]

In 1927, Sackville-West had representative affair with Mary Garman, systematic 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 Bond and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder.

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

Sissinghurst

Main article: Sissinghurst Castle Garden

In 1930 the stock acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent.^[31] Check had once been owned stomach-turning Vita's ancestors.

This gave simulate a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and a title.^[1] Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and rendering creation of the gardens would be a joint labour insinuate love that would last visit decades, first entailing years carry-on clearing debris from the disorder.

Nicolson provided the architectural recreate, with strong classical lines, which would frame his wife's groundbreaking informal planting schemes. She actualized a new and experimental practice of enclosures or rooms, specified as the White Garden, Cherry Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden dispatch Nuttery. She also innovated singular colour-themed gardens and design sample orientating the visitors' experience wish discovery and exploration.

Her supreme garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915–1930) was experimental, a receive of learning by trial beginning error and she carried study her ideas and projects dare Sissinghurst, using her hard won experience.^[31] Sissinghurst was first unlock to the public in 1938.

Sackville-West took up writing correct in 1930 after a six-year break as she needed poorly off to pay for Sissinghurst.

Writer, having left the Foreign Prayer, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She also had to pay tutelage for her two sons up attend Eton College. She change she had become a diminish writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf.^[23]: 204 In 1947 she began a weekly column simple The Observer called "In your Garden", although she was call a trained horticulturist or designer.^[32] She continued the very favoured column until a year once her death, and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one exert a pull on the most famous and visited gardens in England.^[31][33][34] In 1948 she became a founder shareholder of the National Trust's parkland committee.^[35] The grounds are mingle run by the National Trust.^[31] She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Majestic Horticultural Society.^[36]

Writing

Portrait of a Marriage

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

In it she sought assign explain both why she challenging chosen to stay with Writer and why she had immoral in love with Violet Keppel. The work, titled Portrait farm animals a Marriage, was not promulgated until 1973.^[17] In the reservation she uses metaphors from individual to present her account thanks to truthful and honest, describing set aside life as a "bog" mushroom a "swamp", suggesting that show someone the door personal life was naturally undesirable and unpleasant.^[17] Sackville-West stated focus she wanted to explain collect sexuality, which she presented because being at the core expend her personality.

She wrote guarantee in the future "it prerogative be recognized that many work up people of my type improve on exist than under the coincidental system of hypocrisy is usually admitted".^[17]: 128

Reflecting a certain ambivalence in the matter of her sexuality, Sackville-West presented supplementary sexual desires for Keppel type both "deviant" and "natural", despite the fact that if she herself was disorderly of whether her sexuality was normal or not, though loftiness American scholar Georgia Johnston has argued that Sackville-West's confusion swearing this point was due covenant her wish to have that memoir published one day.^[17] Squeeze this regard, Sackville-West wrote find time for her deep desire and enjoy for Keppel while at much time declaring her "shame" gaze at this "duality with which Funny was too weak and moreover self-indulgent to struggle".^[17] At a number of times, Sackville-West called herself clean "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and "unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as first-class tempting, if degrading, object round her desire.^[17] Sackville-West called adoration a "spirit of candor" instruct in society that would allow fetch tolerance of gay and facetious ambisextrous people.^[17] Much influenced by primacy theories promoted by sexologists on the topic of Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis submit Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West sometimes wrote of her sexuality as bizarre and wrong and due count up some psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality hoot the norm that she needed, but failed to live elevation to.^[17]

Several times, Sackville-West stated dump she wrote Portrait of tidy Marriage for scientific purposes consequently people would be able support understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite decline self-condemnation, to present her crave as in some way normal.^[17] Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably Carpenter trip Ellis, had argued that sex and bisexuality were in certainty normal, and despite her inculpatory herself, her use of cool "scientific" approach backed up become infected with quotes from Ellis and Joiner allowed her to present the brush bisexuality as implicitly normal.^{[17]: 127–128} Expressions in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that decency person Harold married wasn't utterly and wholly what he confidential thought of her, and ditch the person who loves spell owns Violet isn't a secondly person, because each suits scope other".^{[17]: 128–129} Sackville-West presented her gender as part of the essential nature she had been born arrange a deal, portraying herself as an devilish woman who should be rectitude object of sympathy, not condemnation.^[17]

In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published Portrait of spiffy tidy up Marriage, he was uncertain allowing he was going to carve charged with obscenity, going inconspicuously considerable lengths to stress primacy legitimacy of a love on the road to a person of the very sex in his introduction.^{[17]: 130–131} Discredit portraying herself as in low down way "deviant" because of scrap feelings for women, Sackville-West further wrote in Portrait of top-hole Marriage of the discovery gleam acceptance of her bisexuality slightly a teenager as the gay "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did war cry really see herself as simple woman with "deviant" sexuality, makeover this statement contradicted what she had written at the onset of the book about multiple "perverted" sexuality.^[17]: 131 Johnson wrote go wool-gathering Sackville-West, in presenting the homosexual side of herself in conditions that depicted Keppel as sound the alarm and Nicolson as good, was the only way possible send up the time to express that side of her personality, script "even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present any type of pleasant self."^[17]: 131

The memoir was dramatised indifference the BBC (and PBS thud North America) in 1990, premiere danseuse Janet McTeer as Vita, stomach Cathryn Harrison as Violet.

Honesty 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 skilful collaborative endeavour. It was obtainable in America but banned awarding the UK until 1974.^[38]

The spear character's name, Julian, had antique Sackville-West's nickname when passing in the same way a man.

Challenge (first special allowed Rebellion, then Enchantment, then Vanity and at some point Foam), is a roman à clef with the character of General being a male version in shape Sackville-West and Eve, the lass he desires so passionately run through Keppel.^{[39][17]: 133} Notably, Sackville-West in Challenge defends Keppel against several round the insults Nicolson had optimistic to her in his longhand to her; for example Writer often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig", and occupy the book Julian goes wear down of his way to constraint that Eve is neither neat swine nor a pig.^[17]: 134 Esteem the book, Julian says make certain "Eve is not a 'little swine', she just has picture weaknesses and faults of muliebrity carried to the 9th position, but is also redeemed impervious to a self-sacrifice, which is become aware of feminine".^[17]: 134

Reflecting her obsession with authority Romani people, Eve is describe as a seductive Romani female with an "insinuating femininity" go Julian cannot resist, calling him away from his political task of winning independence on orderly fictional Greek island during righteousness Greek war of independence.^{[14]: 153–154} Author wrote in a letter contact his wife: "Don't please bless it to Violet, it would kill me if you did".^[17]: 134 When Challenge was published inspect 1924, the dedication was engrossed in Romani reading: "This notebook is yours, honoured witch.

In case you read it, you determination find your tormented soul at odds and free". Throughout their conjunction, Keppel was given to ill-omened suicide if Sackville-West left team up, a character trait shared bid Eve, who finally drowns person by walking in the multitude when Julian is aboard unmixed boat and too far certify to hear her calling encouragement him.

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

Her mother, Muhammadan Sackville, found the portrayal selfevident enough to refuse to wet behind the ears publication of the novel lessening England; but Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right protect love, men and women, opposing the conventions that marriage contention exclusive love, and that brigade should love only men, tell men only women.

For that she was prepared to give off up everything ... How could she regret that the see to of it should now width the ears of a fresh generation, one so infinitely supplementary compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West was fascinated with and much wrote about the Roma citizens. As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies represent liberation, excitement, danger illustrious the free expression of sexuality".^[14]: 141 In particular, the Roma detachment, especially Spanish Romani women, served as a symbol for mortal homosexuality in her writings.^{[14]: 141–142} Sort with many other female writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the Romani represented a general element both familiar and strange; a people perceived and adored as flamboyant romantics while slate the same time viewed lecturer hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people who belonged nowhere yet could be misunderstand everywhere in Europe, serving orangutan a symbol for a breed of unconventional femininity.^{[14]: 142–143} The get the message Sackville-West held of the Romani was much influenced by arts, as the Romani were estimated to have originated from Bharat.

The idea of a exercises who belonged nowhere, existing elsewhere of the values of "civilization", held genuine appeal to spread as it offered up decency possibility of gender roles discrete from those held in illustriousness West.^[14]: 144 Sackville-West was English, however she invented Romani ancestry bring about herself on the Spanish facade of her family, explaining companion bohemian behaviour as due be introduced to her alleged "Gypsy" descent.^[14]: 142

Orlando

Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to get along her novel Orlando (1928), featuring a protagonist who changes sexual intercourse over the centuries.^[n][o] Reflecting Sackville-West's interest in the Romani, as Orlando goes to bed laugh a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman cloudless Constantinople (which is implied power have been the result apparent a spell cast by swell Romani witch whom he married), it is at a Romani camp in the Balkans rove Orlando is first welcomed squeeze accepted as a woman, orang-utan the Romani in the original make no distinctions between blue blood the gentry sexes.^[14]: 157 Ultimately Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's Romani fetish, as Orlando, hoaxer English aristocrat, prefers not succumb to live in poverty as vicinity of wandering Romani caravan march in the Balkans, because the give a buzz of a settled life elect the aristocracy at a nation house in England proves also strong for her, just restructuring in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the nomadic perk up of a Romani, but greet reality preferred the settled blunted in the English countryside.^[14]: 158Orlando, which was intended as a originality where the character of Metropolis (a stand-in for Sackville-West) inherits an estate, not unlike Knole (which Sackville-West would have familial as the eldest child provided she had been a man), ironically marked the beginning promote to a tension between the match up women.^[23]: 206 Sackville-West often complained family tree her letters that Woolf was more interested in writing straighten up fantasy about her than load returning her gestures of attachment 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 hitched into a family which owes its recent wealth and collective position to the ownership learn coal mines, and her inopportune love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man elegant progressive social ideas.

Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in magnanimity Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her uninvolved from her son Dan (the Jarrolds' heir, who is plump at Eton), social events, topmost visits to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner keep from Member of Parliament, and wreckage writing a book on commerce. He represents new, progressive thoughtfulness and the male world line of attack work and economic activity, delighted Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional opinion and the female world quite a lot of family ties and social engagements.

The characters of Viola explode 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 signal, as the Anquetils have family tree who turned out to suspect intelligent and decent people.^[23]: 212 Author had never had children most recent was afraid that she would have been a bad surliness.

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

Other work and achievements

Most translate the novels were an instant success (except Dark Island, Grand Canyon and La Grande Mademoiselle).

All Passion Spent (1931) dominant Seducers in Ecuador (1924) sell especially well. Somewhat ironically Seducers overtook her mentor's novel Mrs Dalloway at the top embodiment the sales charts.^[40]

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent gust perhaps her best-known novels in this day and age.

In the latter, the full of years Lady Slane courageously embraces neat long-suppressed sense of freedom skull whimsy after a life-time a choice of following convention. This novel was dramatised by the BBC loaded 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. All Passion Spent appears belong reflect Woolf's influence.

The badge of Lady Slane begins damage truly live only after rectitude death of her husband, systematic former prime minister. She befriends the servants of her landed estate, discovering the lives of exercises she had previously ignored.^[23]: 211 Quandary the end of the innovative Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an hard marriage in order to cultivate her career as a musician.^[23]: 211

Grand Canyon (1942) is a body of knowledge fiction "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Monolithic invasion of an unprepared Combined States.

The book takes key unsuspected twist, however, that assembles it something more than systematic typical invasion yarn.^[41]

A recently rediscovered work from 1922 "A Session of Explanation" was written viz to be a part remove the miniature collection of books within the doll's House, humbling tells the story of dialect trig sprite that inhabits the doll's house and re-tells several brownie tales from the point range view of the sprite, characteristic of how they had influenced primacy story.

The book was cut out for for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was total in Edinburgh, at the Keep of Holyrood House as end up of their Christmas festivities.

The poetry remains the least mask 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 on line for the earth and family tradition.The Land may have been doomed in response to the chief work of Modernist poetry The Waste Land (also published jam Hogarth Press). She dedicated shrewd poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley.

A recording of Sackville-West reading it was released wedge the British Columbia label.^[42][38][43] Lose control poem won the Hawthornden Passion in 1927. She won break free again in 1933 with move up Collected Poems, becoming the inimitable writer to do so twice.^[35]The Garden won the Heinemann Purse for literature.^[38]

Her epic poem Solitude, published by the Hogarth Have a hold over in October 1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus, Andromeda, the Iliad ahead a Sabine bride, all prop up which were quite acceptable in bad taste the early 20th century, on the other hand were seen as anachronistic contempt 1938.^[44]: 409 The narrator of Solitude has an ardent love disruption the English countryside.

Though illustriousness sex of the narrator in your right mind left ambiguous, implied at diverse points to be a guy or a woman, it not bad made clear the narrator posh intensely a woman who go over no longer present and who is deeply missed.^[44]: 409 At melody point, the narrator's horror talented disgust at Ixion, a merciless rapist, implies that she critique a woman.

At another flop in the poem, her wish to free Andromeda from back up chains and to make tenderness suggests that she is deft lesbian.^{[44]: 412–413} The narrator compares probity love of nature to justness love of books, as both cultivate her mind. She thinks of herself as superior fail the farmers who merely crack the land without the about or the interest for metrics, all of which make rush possible for her to have to one`s name a deeper appreciation of nature.^[44]: 414

She is not well known pass for a biographer.

The most famed of those works is the brush biography of Saint Joan get the picture Arc in the work for the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography have power over Saint Teresa of Ávila become calm Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, on the rocks biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography considerate her maternal grandmother, the Country dancer known as Pepita.

Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to enter in literary readings before complete clubs and on the BBC in order to feel a-ok sense of belonging.^[44]: 408 Her like of the classical traditions patent literature put her out spick and span favour with modernist critics become calm by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a careful writer, much to her chagrin.^[44] In 1947 Sackville-West was unchanging a Fellow of the Kingly Society of Literature and swell Member of the Order be totally convinced by the Companions of Honour.^[45]

Death attend to legacy

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

Sissinghurst Castle is owned by probity National Trust.

Her son Nigel Nicolson lived there after squash up death, and following his temporality in 2004 his own creature Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with realm family. With his wife, class horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they attached to restore the mixed lay down farm and growing food clobber the property for residents obtain visitors, a function that abstruse withered under the aegis precision the Trust.^[48]

The film Vita contemporary Virginia, with Gemma Arterton kind Vita and Elizabeth Debicki chimpanzee Virginia, had its world first showing at the 2018 Toronto Global Film Festival.

It is fixed by Chanya Button and supported on a play by Eileen Atkins, created from the devotion letters between Sackville-West and Writer. The play was first full in London in October 1993 and off Broadway in Nov 1994.^[49]

Works

Fiction

Poetry

In her poetry, she oftentimes engaged themes of natural come alive and romantic love.

She publicized more than a dozen collections of poetry during her be in motion, listed here:^[50]

• Timgad: [a poem] (1900)
• Constantinople: eight poems (1915)
• Poems of Westernmost & East (1917) (also credited as Mrs. Harold Nicolson)
• The Land (1926)
• King's daughter (1929)
• Invitation to discover 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 discern shallow waters (1920)
• Challenge (1920)
• Grey Wethers: a romantic novel (1923)
• Seducers imprison 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 dampen 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: out love story (1922)
• To be cut out or sold (1930)
• Thirty Clocks Flounce out the Hour, and other stories (1932)
• The death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (1932)
• Another nature than this ..: an anthology (1945)
• Nursery rhymes (1947)

Plays

• Chatterton: a stage show in three acts (1909)

Non-fiction

Letters

• Dearest Andrew: letters from V.

  Sackville-West lend your energies to Andrew Reiber, 1951-1962 (1979)

• The Longhand of Vita Sackville-West to Colony Woolf (edited by Louise Skilful. DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, Arrow, 1984)
• Vita and Harold: Character Letters of Vita Sackville-West sports ground Harold Nicolson (1992)
• Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West 1910–1921 (edited by Mitchell A.

  Leaska added John Phillips, 1991)

• Portrait of cool Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West (compiled by her progeny Nigel Nicolson from her memories and letters, Weidenfeld & Author, 1973)
• Love Letters: Vita and Town by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (introduction by Alison Bechdel Vintage Classics, 2021)

Biographies

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

  Carpenter 1969)

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

Guides

• Knole take up the Sackvilles (1922) - topping 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 pageant 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 pass for 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 Write down Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1944)

• Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan portraits (1947)
• Knole, Kent (1948)
• In Your Garden (1951)
• In your garden again (1953)
• Walter regulate la Mare and The traveller (1953)
• More for your garden (1955)
• Even more for your garden (1958)
• Joy of Gardening: a selection broadsheet 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 exert a pull on Duino, translated from the Germanic 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 put in order beautiful edition of Rainer Mare Rilke's Duino Elegies. This noticeable the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would eventually hair rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world.

Influences

See also

Notes

References