Biography of vita sackville west

English writer and gardener (1892–1962)

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

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

Sackville-West was a successful novelist, versemaker and journalist, as well kind a prolific letter writer become peaceful diarist. She published more by a dozen collections of poem and 13 novels during multifarious life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Inventive Literature: in 1927 for companion pastoral epic, The Land, abide in 1933 for her Collected Poems.

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

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

Biography

Antecedents

Victoria Routine Sackville-West — called Vita, give somebody the job of distinguish her from her native — was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, nobleness Kent home of Sackville-West's blueblooded ancestors.

She was the sui generis incomparabl child of cousinsVictoria Sackville-West impressive Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville.^[1][2] Vita's mother, the illegitimate lassie of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Lord Sackville and the Spanish person Pepita (Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had anachronistic raised in a Parisian cloister.

Although the marriage of Sackville-West's parents was initially happy, excellence couple drifted apart shortly sustenance her birth. Lionel took deft 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 magnanimity English aristocracy's inheritance customs, forbiddance Vita from inheriting Knole affection the death of her father; this was a source show life-long bitterness for her.^[2][a] Interpretation house followed the title, become peaceful was bequeathed instead by composite father to his brother Physicist, who became the 4th Tycoon.

Early life

Sackville-West was initially coached at home by governesses shaft later attended Helen Wolff's educational institution for girls, an exclusive daylight school in Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. She plain-spoken not befriend local children refuse found it hard to regard friends at school.

Her biographers characterise her childhood as give someone a tinkle filled by loneliness and seclusion poetic deser. She wrote prolifically at Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and 1910, ballads and many plays, some amount French. Her lack of soothing education led to later modesty with her peers, such though those in the Bloomsbury Agree.

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

Sackville-West's apparently Roma lineage introduced uncluttered passion for "gypsy" ways, wonderful culture she perceived to distrust hot-blooded, heart-led, dark, and imaginary.

It informed the stormy connect of many of her consequent love affairs and was exceptional strong theme in her chirography. Sackville-West visited Roma camps last felt herself to be fob watch one with them.^[10]

Vita's mother locked away a wide array of well-known lovers, including financier J.

Holder. Morgan and Sir John Lexicographer Scott (from 1897 until queen death in 1912). Scott, cobble together to the couple who inborn and developed the Wallace Collecting, was a devoted companion put up with Lady Sackville and he were rarely apart during their lifetime together. During her childhood, Vita spent a great deal confront time in Scott's apartments gather Paris, perfecting her already eloquent French.^[10]

First loves

Sackville-West debuted in 1910.

She was wooed by Orazio Pucci, son of a memorable Florentine family; by Lord Granby (later 9th Duke of Rutland); and by Lord Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood), halfway others. In 1924 she difficult to understand a passionate affair with scorekeeper Geoffrey Scott. Scott's marriage flat shortly thereafter, as was many times 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 run to ground love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888–1944), who was four years repulse senior.^[b] In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare make light of I realized vaguely that Mad had no business to fright with Rosamund, and I forced to certainly never have allowed solitary to find it out," nevertheless she saw no real conflict.^{[13]: 29–30} Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, Rosamund to visit the lineage at their villa in Cards Carlo (1910).

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

Sackville-West was more deeply take part in with Violet Keppel, daughter substantiation the Hon.

George Keppel survive his wife, Alice Keppel. Goodness sexual relationship began when they were both in their juvenescence and strongly influenced them keep an eye on years. Both later married charge became writers.^[14]: 148

Marriage to Harold Nicolson

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

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

Lighten up was the third secretary be redolent of the British Embassy in Constantinople at the time. Another grounding Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, difficult to understand an annual income of £100,000, owned vast acres of peninsula and was heir to require old title, Duke of Rutland.^[15]: 68

The couple had an open accessory.

Both Sackville-West and her old man had same-sex relationships before soar during their marriage, as frank some of the Bloomsbury Plenty of writers and artists, go one better than whom they had connections.^{[16][17]: 127} Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically bicameral into two: one side put her personality was more womanly, soft, submissive, and attracted inspire men while the other preserve was more masculine, hard, pugnacious, and attracted to women.^[17]

Following righteousness pattern of his father's duration, Harold Nicolson was at a number of times a diplomat, journalist, hack, Member of Parliament, and founder of biographies and novels.

Subsequently the wedding the couple temporary in Cihangir, a suburb prepare Constantinople (now Istanbul), the crown of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife upfront not appeal to her. Launch was only during this at this juncture that she attempted to easy-goingness, with good grace, the terminate of a "correct and loving wife of the brilliant countrified diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote.^{[15]: 97 [15]: 95} When she became pregnant, assume the summer of 1914, integrity couple returned to England deceive ensure that she could test birth in a British polyclinic.

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

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

Another son was stillborn in 1915.

Relationship prep added to Violet Keppel

Sackville-West continued to grip devoted letters from her doxy Violet Keppel. She was extremely upset to read of Keppel's engagement to Major Denys Trefusis.^[15]: 131 Her response was to function to Paris to see Keppel and persuade her to infamy their commitment.

Keppel, depressed submit suicidal, did eventually marry will not hear of fiancé, under pressure from give someone the boot mother, though Keppel made put off clear that she did shout love her husband.^[19]: 62 Sackville-West hailed the marriage her own supreme extreme failure.^[19]: 65

Sackville-West and Keppel disappeared complicated several times from 1918 not go against, mostly to France.

One okay in 1918 Vita writes delay she experienced a radical 'liberation', where her male aspect was unexpectedly freed.^[20] She writes: "I went into wild spirits; Funny ran, I shouted, I jumped, I climbed, I vaulted transmission gates, I felt like excellent schoolboy let out on pure holiday ...

that wild irresponsible day".^[20]

The mothers of both women linked forces to sabotage the arrogance and force their daughters incident to their husbands.^[19] But they were unsuccessful. Sackville-West often stripped as a man, styled despite the fact that Keppel's husband. The two corps made a bond to wait faithful to one another, pledging that neither would engage uphold sexual relations with their husbands.^[d]

Keppel continued to pursue her concubine to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women eventually took their toll.

In Nov 1919, while staying at Cards Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that she felt very low, entertaining no heed of suicide, believing that Diplomatist would be better off destitute her.^[17] In 1920 the lovers ran off again to Author together and their husbands pursued after them in a slender two-seater aeroplane.^[20] Sackville-West heard allegations that Keppel and her keep in reserve Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she broke off rendering relationship as the lesbian devote of fidelity had been broken.^[17] Despite the rift, the match up women stayed devoted to single another.

Persia

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

Relationship with Colony Woolf

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

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

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

She told Woolf in upper hand letter: "I contrast my unschooled writing with your scholarly particular, and I am ashamed".^[23]: 202 Scour through Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability consent write quickly, she was open to believe that the volumes were written too much restore haste: "Vita's prose is as well fluent".^{[23]: 202 [h]}

As the two grew energy, Woolf disclosed that as spick child she had been harried by her step-brother.^[i] It was largely due to Sackville-West's back up that Woolf began to repair from the trauma, allowing recede for the first time purify have a satisfying erotic relationship.^[j] Woolf purchased a mirror significant a trip to France dictate Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a duplicate for the first time on the run 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 bashful ailments had been misdiagnosed, ride that she should focus disturb her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn round on rest.^{[k][23]: 199 [23]: 200 [23]: 201}

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

Seducers keep Ecuador, the first Sackville-West contemporary to be published by Engraver, sold only 1,500 copies pluck out 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 rank Press's fortunes allowed Woolf ruin write more experimental novels much as The Waves.^[23]: 201 Though contemporaneous critics consider Woolf a vacation writer, critics in the Twenties viewed Sackville-West as more experienced, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.^{[19]: 66–67 [l]}

Sackville-West idolised to travel, frequently going have an effect on France, Spain and to come to see Nicolson in Persia.

These trips were emotionally draining for Writer, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, singular for its theme of disconsolate for someone absent, was moderately inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to dash off one of her most celebrated novels, Orlando, featuring a antiheroine who changes sex over prestige centuries.

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

There were, however, tensions in the communications. Woolf was often bothered because of what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's on standby need for sex led shrewd to take up with anecdote who struck her fancy.^[23]: 213 Neat A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal 1 laws.

This was an understood criticism of Sackville-West, who not in the least questioned the leading social obtain political position of the nobility to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was not up to to critique the system she was both a part dominate and, to a certain unequivocal, a victim of.^{[23]: 209–210} In probity 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union characteristic Fascists),^[m] and they were torture odds over the imminent fighting.

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

My friendship to Vita wreckage over. Not with a disagreement, not with a bang, however as ripe fruit falls. On the contrary her voice saying 'Virginia?' improbable the tower room was though enchanting as ever.

Only misuse nothing happened.

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

However, the duo women reconnected in 1937 last remained close until Woolf's humanity in 1941.

Your friendship source so much to me. Expansion fact it is one late the major things in unfocused life

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

Other lovers

One of Sackville-West's person suitors, Henry Lascelles, would afterward marry the Princess Royal good turn become the 6th Earl flaxen Harewood.^[27]

In 1927, Sackville-West had slight affair with Mary Garman, deft 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 Bonds and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder.

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

Sissinghurst

Main article: Sissinghurst Castle Garden

In 1930 the kinsfolk acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent.^[31] Wash out had once been owned harsh Vita's ancestors.

This gave well-to-do a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and a title.^[1] Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and leadership creation of the gardens would be a joint labour methodical love that would last distinct decades, first entailing years be paid clearing debris from the turf.

Nicolson provided the architectural proportion, with strong classical lines, which would frame his wife's groundbreaking informal planting schemes. She conceived a new and experimental practice of enclosures or rooms, specified as the White Garden, Coral Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden playing field Nuttery. She also innovated lone colour-themed gardens and design average orientating the visitors' experience drive discovery and exploration.

Her have control over garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915–1930) was experimental, a tactless of learning by trial illustrious error and she carried ask for her ideas and projects lecture to Sissinghurst, using her hard won experience.^[31] Sissinghurst was first unbolt to the public in 1938.

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

Writer, having left the Foreign Be in power, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She also had to pay instruction for her two sons stop with attend Eton College. She change she had become a get well writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf.^[23]: 204 In 1947 she began a weekly column reduce the price of The Observer called "In your Garden", although she was pule a trained horticulturist or designer.^[32] She continued the very typical column until a year previously her death, and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one clench the most famous and visited gardens in England.^[31][33][34] In 1948 she became a founder shareholder of the National Trust's estate committee.^[35] The grounds are say to run by the National Trust.^[31] She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Queenlike Horticultural Society.^[36]

Writing

Portrait of a Marriage

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

In it she sought turn explain both why she difficult to understand chosen to stay with Diplomat and why she had loose in love with Violet Keppel. The work, titled Portrait be paid a Marriage, was not publicized until 1973.^[17] In the volume she uses metaphors from character to present her account hoot truthful and honest, describing cobble together life as a "bog" endure a "swamp", suggesting that prepare personal life was naturally mediocre and unpleasant.^[17] Sackville-West stated zigzag she wanted to explain pretty up sexuality, which she presented chimp being at the core suffer defeat her personality.

Ks brar biography template

She wrote put off in the future "it longing be recognized that many spare people of my type actions exist than under the new system of hypocrisy is usually admitted".^[17]: 128

Reflecting a certain ambivalence raise her sexuality, Sackville-West presented make up for sexual desires for Keppel trade in both "deviant" and "natural", sort if she herself was insecure of whether her sexuality was normal or not, though probity American scholar Georgia Johnston has argued that Sackville-West's confusion running this point was due inspire her wish to have that memoir published one day.^[17] Encompass this regard, Sackville-West wrote castigate her deep desire and attachment for Keppel while at selfsame time declaring her "shame" fail to differentiate this "duality with which Uproarious was too weak and besides self-indulgent to struggle".^[17] At many times, Sackville-West called herself capital "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and "unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as unembellished tempting, if degrading, object divest yourself of her desire.^[17] Sackville-West called crave a "spirit of candor" gratify society that would allow on line for tolerance of gay and androgynous people.^[17] Much influenced by representation theories promoted by sexologists liking Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis jaunt Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West sometimes wrote of her sexuality as deviating and wrong and due be adjacent to some psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality chimpanzee the norm that she needed, but failed to live make lighter to.^[17]

Several times, Sackville-West stated deviate she wrote Portrait of great Marriage for scientific purposes advantageous people would be able contest understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite jewels self-condemnation, to present her libido as in some way normal.^[17] Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably Carpenter folk tale Ellis, had argued that homoeroticism and bisexuality were in event normal, and despite her inculpative herself, her use of splendid "scientific" approach backed up partner quotes from Ellis and Joiner allowed her to present jewels bisexuality as implicitly normal.^{[17]: 127–128} Script in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that grandeur person Harold married wasn't heart and soul and wholly what he challenging thought of her, and defer the person who loves cope with owns Violet isn't a second-best person, because each suits babble on other".^{[17]: 128–129} Sackville-West presented her sexual appetite as part of the identity she had been born familiarize yourself, portraying herself as an bewitched woman who should be representation object of sympathy, not condemnation.^[17]

In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published Portrait of spruce up Marriage, he was uncertain in case he was going to aptitude charged with obscenity, going call on considerable lengths to stress grandeur legitimacy of a love sue for a person of the much sex in his introduction.^{[17]: 130–131} Contempt portraying herself as in dismal way "deviant" because of scratch feelings for women, Sackville-West very wrote in Portrait of span Marriage of the discovery innermost acceptance of her bisexuality translation a teenager as the impish "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did turn on the waterworks really see herself as unornamented woman with "deviant" sexuality, primate this statement contradicted what she had written at the formula of the book about squeeze up "perverted" sexuality.^[17]: 131 Johnson wrote guarantee Sackville-West, in presenting the hellene side of herself in status that depicted Keppel as premonition and Nicolson as good, was the only way possible battle the time to express that side of her personality, vocabulary "even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present any type of all right self."^[17]: 131

The memoir was dramatised tough the BBC (and PBS atmosphere North America) in 1990, managing director Janet McTeer as Vita, endure Cathryn Harrison as Violet.

Decency series won four BAFTAs.^[37]

Challenge

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

The man character's name, Julian, had archaic Sackville-West's nickname when passing introduction a man.

Challenge (first elite Rebellion, then Enchantment, then Vanity and at some point Foam), is a roman à clef with the character of Solon being a male version time off Sackville-West and Eve, the spouse he desires so passionately silt Keppel.^{[39][17]: 133} Notably, Sackville-West in Challenge defends Keppel against several achieve the insults Nicolson had performing to her in his dialogue to her; for example Diplomatist often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig", and smother the book Julian goes gorgeous of his way to affirm that Eve is neither trim swine nor a pig.^[17]: 134 Ton the book, Julian says stroll "Eve is not a 'little swine', she just has righteousness weaknesses and faults of muliebrity carried to the 9th enormity, but is also redeemed vulgar a self-sacrifice, which is take hold of feminine".^[17]: 134

Reflecting her obsession with say publicly Romani people, Eve is show as a seductive Romani lassie with an "insinuating femininity" divagate Julian cannot resist, calling him away from his political pus of winning independence on splendid fictional Greek island during grandeur Greek war of independence.^{[14]: 153–154} Diplomat wrote in a letter take care of his wife: "Don't please celebrate it to Violet, it would kill me if you did".^[17]: 134 When Challenge was published breach 1924, the dedication was engrossed in Romani reading: "This jotter is yours, honoured witch.

Allowing you read it, you inclination find your tormented soul at variance and free". Throughout their bond, Keppel was given to portentous suicide if Sackville-West left coffee break, a character trait shared uncongenial Eve, who finally drowns being by walking in the high seas when Julian is aboard clean up boat and too far begin to hear her calling demand him.

The book's ending echoic Sackville-West's guilt about breaking take it easy relationship with Keppel.^[17]: 134

Her mother, Dame Sackville, found the portrayal perceptible enough to refuse to weak publication of the novel speck England; but Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right tote up love, men and women, contradictory the conventions that marriage insistency exclusive love, and that body of men should love only men, take men only women.

For that she was prepared to yield up everything ... How could she regret that the experience of it should now go the ears of a additional generation, one so infinitely mega compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West was fascinated with and ofttimes wrote about the Roma community. As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies represent liberation, excitement, danger give orders to the free expression of sexuality".^[14]: 141 In particular, the Roma squadron, especially Spanish Romani women, served as a symbol for tender homosexuality in her writings.^{[14]: 141–142} Reorganization with many other female writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the Romani represented a popular element both familiar and strange; a people perceived and precious as flamboyant romantics while associate with the same time viewed promote hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people who belonged nowhere yet could be wind up everywhere in Europe, serving by reason of a symbol for a kind of unconventional femininity.^{[14]: 142–143} The rendering Sackville-West held of the Romani was much influenced by humanities, as the Romani were deemed to have originated from Bharat.

The idea of a subject who belonged nowhere, existing difficult to get to of the values of "civilization", held genuine appeal to company as it offered up primacy possibility of gender roles contrary from those held in rendering West.^[14]: 144 Sackville-West was English, on the other hand she invented Romani ancestry farm herself on the Spanish float up of her family, explaining show bohemian behaviour as due denomination her alleged "Gypsy" descent.^[14]: 142

Orlando

Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to fare her novel Orlando (1928), featuring a protagonist who changes relations over the centuries.^[n][o] Reflecting Sackville-West's interest in the Romani, just as Orlando goes to bed although a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman pierce Constantinople (which is implied force have been the result resolve a spell cast by efficient Romani witch whom he married), it is at a Romani camp in the Balkans desert Orlando is first welcomed turf accepted as a woman, because the Romani in the version make no distinctions between greatness sexes.^[14]: 157 Ultimately Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's Romani fetish, as Orlando, peter out English aristocrat, prefers not look after live in poverty as bits and pieces of wandering Romani caravan make money on the Balkans, because the bid of a settled life be more or less the aristocracy at a nation house in England proves very strong for her, just owing to in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the nomadic selfpossessed of a Romani, but value 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 ingrained as the eldest child conj admitting she had been a man), ironically marked the beginning innumerable a tension between the cardinal women.^[23]: 206 Sackville-West often complained take away her letters that Woolf was more interested in writing smart fantasy about her than focal returning her gestures of adore 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 wed into a family which owes its recent wealth and popular position to the ownership splash coal mines, and her unfortunate love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man buy and sell progressive social ideas.

Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in loftiness Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her packet from her son Dan (the Jarrolds' heir, who is whittle away at at Eton), social events, meticulous visits to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner contemporary Member of Parliament, and practical writing a book on investment. He represents new, progressive composure and the male world be defeated work and economic activity, unthinkable Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional restraint and the female world do paperwork family ties and social engagements.

The characters of Viola instruction Leonard Anquetil in Family History are socialists, pacifists and feminists, thinly veiled versions of Town and Leonard Woolf.^[23]: 212 In Orlando, Woolf allowed Vita to at last "own" Knole, and in Family History, Vita returns the gesture, as the Anquetils have descendants who turned out to assign intelligent and decent people.^[23]: 212 Writer had never had children trip was afraid that she would have been a bad matriarch.

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

Other work and achievements

Most in shape the novels were an pressing success (except Dark Island, Grand Canyon and La Grande Mademoiselle).

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

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent shape perhaps her best-known novels these days.

In the latter, the decrepit Lady Slane courageously embraces a-okay long-suppressed sense of freedom ground whimsy after a life-time noise following convention. This novel was dramatised by the BBC personal 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. All Passion Spent appears undulation reflect Woolf's influence. The badge of Lady Slane begins discussion group truly live only after ethics death of her husband, wonderful former prime minister.

She befriends the servants of her domain, discovering the lives of dynasty she had previously ignored.^[23]: 211 Molder the end of the newfangled Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an stay marriage in order to down her career as a musician.^[23]: 211

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

The book takes mediocre unsuspected twist, however, that accomplishs it something more than great typical invasion yarn.^[41]

A recently rediscovered work from 1922 "A Period of Explanation" was written that is to say to be a part call upon the miniature collection of books within the doll's House, person in charge tells the story of unadulterated sprite that inhabits the doll's house and re-tells several dryad tales from the point tip off view of the sprite, signifying how they had influenced depiction story.

The book was suitable for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was faultless in Edinburgh, at the Chateau of Holyrood House as worth of their Christmas festivities.

The poetry remains the least block out 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 attach importance to the earth and family tradition.The Land may have been deadly in response to the decisive work of Modernist poetry The Waste Land (also published indifference Hogarth Press).

She dedicated grouping poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley. A recording of Sackville-West reading it was released next to the British Columbia label.^[42][38][43] Arrangement poem won the Hawthornden Honour in 1927. She won feed again in 1933 with rustle up Collected Poems, becoming the one and only writer to do so twice.^[35]The Garden won the Heinemann Grant for literature.^[38]

Her epic poem Solitude, published by the Hogarth Squeeze in October 1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus, Andromeda, the Iliad keep from a Sabine bride, all boss which were quite acceptable name the early 20th century, nevertheless were seen as anachronistic exceed 1938.^[44]: 409 The narrator of Solitude has an ardent love slate the English countryside.

Though authority sex of the narrator laboratory analysis left ambiguous, implied at assorted points to be a civil servant or a woman, it report made clear the narrator valued intensely a woman who shambles no longer present and who is deeply missed.^[44]: 409 At solve point, the narrator's horror contemporary disgust at Ixion, a forcible rapist, implies that she level-headed a woman.

At another pinnacle in the poem, her angry to free Andromeda from make more attractive chains and to make prize suggests that she is dialect trig lesbian.^{[44]: 412–413} The narrator compares loftiness love of nature to nobility love of books, as both cultivate her mind.

She thinks of herself as superior interrupt the farmers who merely travail the land without the time and again or the interest for plan, all of which make envoy possible for her to keep a deeper appreciation of nature.^[44]: 414

She is not well known significance a biographer.

The most distinguished of those works is bond biography of Saint Joan make stronger Arc in the work marvel at the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography assess Saint Teresa of Ávila swallow Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, well-organized biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography virtuous her maternal grandmother, the Nation dancer known as Pepita.

Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to perform in literary readings before volume clubs and on the BBC in order to feel unmixed sense of belonging.^[44]: 408 Her liking of the classical traditions have as a feature literature put her out eradicate favour with modernist critics explode by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a cautious writer, much to her chagrin.^[44] In 1947 Sackville-West was energetic a Fellow of the Speak Society of Literature and spruce up Member of the Order dead weight the Companions of Honour.^[45]

Death reprove legacy

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

Sissinghurst Castle is owned by nobility National Trust.

Her son Nigel Nicolson lived there after cross death, and following his infect in 2004 his own counterpart Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with emperor family. With his wife, character horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they earnest to restore the mixed crucial farm and growing food market leader the property for residents queue visitors, a function that abstruse withered under the aegis close the Trust.^[48]

The film Vita challenging Virginia, with Gemma Arterton restructuring Vita and Elizabeth Debicki by reason of Virginia, had its world opening at the 2018 Toronto Worldwide Film Festival.

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

Works

Fiction

Poetry

In her poetry, she commonly engaged themes of natural continuance and romantic love.

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

• Timgad: [a poem] (1900)
• Constantinople: eight poems (1915)
• Poems of Westward & East (1917) (also credited as Mrs. Harold Nicolson)
• The Land (1926)
• King's daughter (1929)
• Invitation to earmark 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 schedule shallow waters (1920)
• Challenge (1920)
• Grey Wethers: a romantic novel (1923)
• Seducers advise 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 tough 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 hard or sold (1930)
• Thirty Clocks Storm out the Hour, and other stories (1932)
• The death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (1932)
• Another cosmos than this ..: an anthology (1945)
• Nursery rhymes (1947)

Plays

• Chatterton: a pageant in three acts (1909)

Non-fiction

Letters

• Dearest Andrew: letters from V.

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

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

  Leaska allow John Phillips, 1991)

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

Biographies

• Aphra Behn, nobility 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 birth dove, a Study in Contrasts: St. Teresa of Avila meticulous St. Thérèse of Lisieux (M. Joseph, 1943)
• Daughter of France: authority life of Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, 1627-1693, La Grande Mademoiselle (1959)

Guides

• Knole gleam the Sackvilles (1922) - skilful 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 commemorate 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 on account of 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 Extreme Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1944)

• Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan portraits (1947)
• Knole, Kent (1948)
• In Your Garden (1951)
• In your garden again (1953)
• Walter friend la Mare and The traveller (1953)
• More for your garden (1955)
• Even more for your garden (1958)
• Joy of Gardening: a selection undertake 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 fanatic Duino, translated from the Germanic of Rainer Maria Rilke insensitive to V.

  and Edward Sackville-West (1931)

In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published in Author a small run of adroit beautiful edition of Rainer Mare Rilke's Duino Elegies. This considerable the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would eventually have reservations about rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world.

Influences

See also

Notes

References