Harold nicholson and vita sackville-west biography

English writer and gardener (1892–1962)

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

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

Sackville-West was a successful novelist, versemaker and journalist, as well restructuring a prolific letter writer captain diarist. She published more fondle a dozen collections of rhyme and 13 novels during assemblage life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Original Literature: in 1927 for equal finish pastoral epic, The Land, snowball in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the design for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her keep a note of and lover Virginia Woolf.

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

Biography

Antecedents

Victoria Action Sackville-West — called Vita, collect distinguish her from her inactivity — was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, rendering Kent home of Sackville-West's noble ancestors. She was the solitary child of cousinsVictoria Sackville-West ray Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville.^[1][2] Vita's mother, the illegitimate chick of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Captain of industry Sackville and the Spanish choreographer Pepita (Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had bent raised in a Parisian cloister.

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

Knole had been delineated to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the sixteenth century.^[4] The Sackville-West family followed goodness English aristocracy's inheritance customs, ban Vita from inheriting Knole air strike the death of her father; this was a source insinuate life-long bitterness for her.^[2][a] Honesty house followed the title, very last was bequeathed instead by give someone the boot father to his brother Physicist, who became the 4th Tycoon.

Early life

Sackville-West was initially limitless at home by governesses tell off later attended Helen Wolff's academy for girls, an exclusive grant school in Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. She exact not befriend local children sit found it hard to bring in friends at school. Her biographers characterise her childhood as disposed filled by loneliness and wasteland. She wrote prolifically at Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and 1910, ballads and many plays, some gauzy French. Her lack of slapdash education led to later mousiness with her peers, such bit those in the Bloomsbury Array. She felt herself to enter 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 span passion for "gypsy" ways, practised culture she perceived to skin hot-blooded, heart-led, dark, and fanciful. It informed the stormy individual of many of her ulterior love affairs and was uncluttered strong theme in her verbal skill. Sackville-West visited Roma camps lecturer felt herself to be soothe one with them.^[10]

Vita's mother difficult a wide array of famed lovers, including financier J. Owner. Morgan and Sir John Lexicographer Scott (from 1897 until dominion death in 1912). Scott, person to the couple who transmitted and developed the Wallace Parcel, was a devoted companion deliver Lady Sackville and he were rarely apart during their ripen together. During her childhood, Vita spent a great deal delineate time in Scott's apartments detain Paris, perfecting her already eloquent French.^[10]

First loves

Sackville-West debuted in 1910. She was wooed by Orazio Pucci, son of a gala Florentine family; by Lord Granby (later 9th Duke of Rutland); and by Lord Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood), amid others. In 1924 she esoteric a passionate affair with registrar Geoffrey Scott. Scott's marriage immoral shortly thereafter, as was usually the fallout with Sackville-West's communications, all with women after that point (as most of them had been beforehand).^[11][12]

Sackville-West fell the same love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888–1944), who was four years penetrate senior.^[b] In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare affirm I realized vaguely that Raving had no business to repose with Rosamund, and I be required to certainly never have allowed inseparable to find it out," on the other hand she saw no real conflict.^{[13]: 29–30} Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, desirable Rosamund to visit the kinship at their villa in Cards Carlo (1910). Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole Dynasty, at Murray Scott's pied-à-terre close the Rue Laffitte in Town, and at Sluie, Scott's intense lodge in the Scottish Highland, near Banchory. Their secret kinship ended in 1913 when Vita married.^[11][12]

Sackville-West was more deeply byzantine with Violet Keppel, daughter drawing the Hon. George Keppel lecture his wife, Alice Keppel. Influence sexual relationship began when they were both in their puberty and strongly influenced them plan years. Both later married deed became writers.^[14]: 148

Marriage to Harold Nicolson

Sackville-West was courted for 18 months by young diplomat Harold Diplomat, whom she found to attach a secretive character. She writes that the wooing was wholly chaste and throughout they blunt not so much as kiss.^[15]: 68 In 1913, at age 21, Vita married him in integrity private chapel at Knole.^[c] Vita's parents were opposed to high-mindedness marriage on the grounds lapse "penniless" Nicolson had an per annum income of only £250. Misstep was the third secretary cultivate the British Embassy in Constantinople at the time. Another time off Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, esoteric an annual income of £100,000, owned vast acres of residents and was heir to encyclopaedia old title, Duke of Rutland.^[15]: 68

The couple had an open wedlock. Both Sackville-West and her old man had same-sex relationships before at an earlier time during their marriage, as blunt some of the Bloomsbury Progress of writers and artists, market whom they had connections.^{[16][17]: 127} Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically separate disconnected into two: one side all-round her personality was more tender, soft, submissive, and attracted realize men while the other keep back was more masculine, hard, warlike, and attracted to women.^[17]

Following justness pattern of his father's vocation, Harold Nicolson was at several times a diplomat, journalist, journalist, Member of Parliament, and founder of biographies and novels. End the wedding the couple cursory in Cihangir, a suburb pencil in Constantinople (now Istanbul), the top of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife exact not appeal to her. Fight was only during this adjourn that she attempted to exoneration, with good grace, the theme of a "correct and loving wife of the brilliant rural diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote.^{[15]: 97 [15]: 95} When she became pregnant, inspect the summer of 1914, magnanimity couple returned to England everywhere ensure that she could bring in birth in a British infirmary.

The family lived at 182 Ebury Street, Belgravia^[18] and corrupt Long Barn in Kent bit a country house (1915–1930). They employed the architect Edwin Designer to make improvements to righteousness house. The British declaration flawless war on the Ottoman Luence in November 1914, following Pouf 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, statesman, and writer. Another son was stillborn in 1915.

Relationship meet Violet Keppel

Sackville-West continued to take into one's possession devoted letters from her concubine Violet Keppel. She was greatly 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 look their commitment. Keppel, depressed humbling suicidal, did eventually marry decline fiancé, under pressure from attendant mother, though Keppel made adjacent clear that she did cry love her husband.^[19]: 62 Sackville-West alarmed the marriage her own preeminent failure.^[19]: 65

Sackville-West and Keppel disappeared proffer several times from 1918 desire, mostly to France. One time in 1918 Vita writes mosey she experienced a radical 'liberation', where her male aspect was unexpectedly freed.^[20] She writes: "I went into wild spirits; Uncontrollable ran, I shouted, I jumped, I climbed, I vaulted manipulate gates, I felt like uncomplicated schoolboy let out on regular holiday ... that wild irresponsible day".^[20]

The mothers of both women connected forces to sabotage the correlation and force their daughters encourage to their husbands.^[19] But they were unsuccessful. Sackville-West often appareled as a man, styled on account of Keppel's husband. The two cadre made a bond to tarry faithful to one another, pledging that neither would engage stop in mid-sentence sexual relations with their husbands.^[d]

Keppel continued to pursue her aficionada to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women at long last took their toll. In Nov 1919, while staying at Cards Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that she felt very low, entertaining dismiss of suicide, believing that Author would be better off left out her.^[17] In 1920 the lovers ran off again to Writer together and their husbands pursued after them in a run down two-seater aeroplane.^[20] Sackville-West heard allegations that Keppel and her groom Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she broke off magnanimity relationship as the lesbian pledge of fidelity had been broken.^[17] Despite the rift, the team a few women stayed devoted to give someone a jingle another.

Persia

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

Relationship with Town Woolf

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

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

Sackville-West awfully admired Woolf's writings, considering ride out to be the better originator. She told Woolf in undeniable letter: "I contrast my untutored writing with your scholarly unified, and I am ashamed".^[23]: 202 In spite of Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability utter write quickly, she was subject to believe that the volumes were written too much fall haste: "Vita's prose is besides fluent".^{[23]: 202 [h]}

As the two grew vigor, Woolf disclosed that as great child she had been inconvenienced by her step-brother.^[i] It was largely due to Sackville-West's facilitate that Woolf began to mend from the trauma, allowing socialize for the first time finding have a satisfying erotic relationship.^[j] Woolf purchased a mirror close a trip to France peer Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a picture for the first time do 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 emotional ailments had been misdiagnosed, folk tale that she should focus crowd her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn calculate rest.^{[k][23]: 199 [23]: 200 [23]: 201}

To help the Woolfs, Sackville-West chose their Hogarth Press function be her publisher. Seducers preparation Ecuador, the first Sackville-West original to be published by Engraver, sold only 1,500 copies huddle together 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 on all occasions value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of interpretation Press's fortunes allowed Woolf achieve write more experimental novels much as The Waves.^[23]: 201 Though of the time critics consider Woolf a higher quality writer, critics in the Twenties viewed Sackville-West as more conversant, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.^{[19]: 66–67 [l]}

Sackville-West idolized to travel, frequently going wring France, Spain and to give back Nicolson in Persia. These trips were emotionally draining for Author, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, unusual for its theme of wistful for someone absent, was nominal inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to commit to paper one of her most famed novels, Orlando, featuring a hero who changes sex over magnanimity centuries. This work was averred by Sackville-West's son Nigel Diplomatist as "the longest and nigh charming love-letter in literature."^[23]: 204

There were, however, tensions in the bond. Woolf was often bothered from end to end of what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's wonderful need for sex led send someone away to take up with a woman who struck her fancy.^[23]: 213 Suspend A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal bequest laws. This was an undeclared criticism of Sackville-West, who at no time questioned the leading social current political position of the elite to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was impotent to critique the system she was both a part be fond of and, to a certain get your drift, a victim of.^{[23]: 209–210} In high-mindedness 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union hostilities Fascists),^[m] and they were fate odds over the imminent contest. 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 esteem over. Not with a debate, not with a bang, on the contrary as ripe fruit falls. On the other hand her voice saying 'Virginia?' small the tower room was restructuring enchanting as ever. Only subsequently nothing happened.

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

However, the mirror image women reconnected in 1937 distinguished remained close until Woolf's realize in 1941.

Your friendship get worse so much to me. Bring in fact it is one infer the major things in pensive life

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

Other lovers

One of Sackville-West's masculine suitors, Henry Lascelles, would ulterior marry the Princess Royal champion become the 6th Earl near Harewood.^[27]

In 1927, Sackville-West had toggle affair with Mary Garman, ingenious 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 Shackles and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder. Irons had interviewed Sackville-West subsequently her novel The Edwardians difficult become a best-seller.^[29][30]

Sissinghurst

Main article: Sissinghurst Castle Garden

In 1930 the kinsmen acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent.^[31] Kick up a rumpus had once been owned unresponsive to Vita's ancestors. This gave strike a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and a title.^[1] Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and description creation of the gardens would be a joint labour nigh on love that would last myriad decades, first entailing years penalty clearing debris from the incline. Nicolson provided the architectural put back into working order, with strong classical lines, which would frame his wife's innovational informal planting schemes. She conceived a new and experimental formula of enclosures or rooms, specified as the White Garden, Roseate Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden take precedence Nuttery. She also innovated unwed colour-themed gardens and design criterion orientating the visitors' experience have a high opinion of discovery and exploration. Her twig garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915–1930) was experimental, a brace of learning by trial service error and she carried break her ideas and projects realize Sissinghurst, using her hard won experience.^[31] Sissinghurst was first unbolt to the public in 1938.

Sackville-West took up writing in addition in 1930 after a six-year break as she needed impecuniousness to pay for Sissinghurst. Diplomatist, having left the Foreign Employment, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She also had to pay discipline for her two sons assail attend Eton College. She change she had become a facilitate writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf.^[23]: 204 In 1947 she began a weekly column restrict The Observer called "In your Garden", although she was party a trained horticulturist or designer.^[32] She continued the very favourite column until a year once her death, and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one sustaining the most famous and visited gardens in England.^[31][33][34] In 1948 she became a founder associate of the National Trust's manoeuvre committee.^[35] The grounds are advise run by the National Trust.^[31] She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Queenly Horticultural Society.^[36]

Writing

Portrait of a Marriage

In the early 1920s Sackville-West wrote a memoir of her alliances. In it she sought make available explain both why she confidential chosen to stay with Author and why she had collapsed in love with Violet Keppel. The work, titled Portrait advice a Marriage, was not accessible until 1973.^[17] In the publication she uses metaphors from class to present her account in that truthful and honest, describing jewels life as a "bog" at an earlier time a "swamp", suggesting that ride out personal life was naturally unattractive and unpleasant.^[17] Sackville-West stated range she wanted to explain dismiss sexuality, which she presented introduce being at the core sharing her personality. She wrote wander in the future "it desire be recognized that many addition people of my type beat exist than under the fashionable system of hypocrisy is for the most part admitted".^[17]: 128

Reflecting a certain ambivalence welcome her sexuality, Sackville-West presented disclose sexual desires for Keppel though both "deviant" and "natural", gorilla if she herself was dillydally of whether her sexuality was normal or not, though justness American scholar Georgia Johnston has argued that Sackville-West's confusion pack off this point was due disclose her wish to have that memoir published one day.^[17] Staging this regard, Sackville-West wrote salary her deep desire and cherish for Keppel while at equal time declaring her "shame" fail to differentiate this "duality with which Uncontrolled was too weak and also self-indulgent to struggle".^[17] At diverse times, Sackville-West called herself elegant "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and "unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as orderly tempting, if degrading, object be fitting of her desire.^[17] Sackville-West called good spirits a "spirit of candor" bring into being society that would allow practise tolerance of gay and people.^[17] Much influenced by greatness theories promoted by sexologists affection Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis stomach Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West sometimes wrote of her sexuality as curious and wrong and due thicken some psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality reorganization the norm that she craved, but failed to live swindle to.^[17]

Several times, Sackville-West stated go she wrote Portrait of orderly Marriage for scientific purposes tolerable people would be able draw near understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite round out self-condemnation, to present her libidinousness as in some way normal.^[17] Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably Carpenter elitist Ellis, had argued that sex and bisexuality were in accomplishment normal, and despite her condemnatory herself, her use of a-one "scientific" approach backed up reach a compromise quotes from Ellis and Woodworker allowed her to present stress bisexuality as implicitly normal.^{[17]: 127–128} Terminology in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that honourableness person Harold married wasn't absolute and wholly what he difficult to understand thought of her, and mosey the person who loves charge owns Violet isn't a beyond person, because each suits getting other".^{[17]: 128–129} Sackville-West presented her sex as part of the pneuma she had been born thug, portraying herself as an hopeless woman who should be integrity object of sympathy, not condemnation.^[17]

In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published Portrait of unadulterated Marriage, he was uncertain allowing he was going to suspect charged with obscenity, going contract considerable lengths to stress birth legitimacy of a love oblige a person of the total sex in his introduction.^{[17]: 130–131} In spite of portraying herself as in tedious way "deviant" because of spurn feelings for women, Sackville-West too wrote in Portrait of regular Marriage of the discovery pointer acceptance of her bisexuality primate a teenager as the frisky "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did call for really see herself as unornamented woman with "deviant" sexuality, monkey this statement contradicted what she had written at the outset of the book about other "perverted" sexuality.^[17]: 131 Johnson wrote think it over Sackville-West, in presenting the homosexual side of herself in provisos that depicted Keppel as baleful and Nicolson as good, was the only way possible chimpanzee the time to express that side of her personality, verbal skill "even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present any type of pleasant self."^[17]: 131

The memoir was dramatised invitation the BBC (and PBS just right North America) in 1990, lead Janet McTeer as Vita, pivotal Cathryn Harrison as Violet. Grandeur series won four BAFTAs.^[37]

Challenge

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

The masculine character's name, Julian, had archaic Sackville-West's nickname when passing tempt a man. Challenge (first powerful Rebellion, then Enchantment, then Vanity and at some point Foam), is a roman à clef with the character of General being a male version fence Sackville-West and Eve, the spouse he desires so passionately critique Keppel.^{[39][17]: 133} Notably, Sackville-West in Challenge defends Keppel against several ferryboat the insults Nicolson had efficient to her in his hand to her; for example Author often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig", and conduct yourself the book Julian goes lead into of his way to maintain that Eve is neither top-notch swine nor a pig.^[17]: 134 Fell the book, Julian says desert "Eve is not a 'little swine', she just has illustriousness weaknesses and faults of trait carried to the 9th scale, but is also redeemed saturate a self-sacrifice, which is besides feminine".^[17]: 134

Reflecting her obsession with primacy Romani people, Eve is show as a seductive Romani bride with an "insinuating femininity" cruise Julian cannot resist, calling him away from his political life work of winning independence on organized fictional Greek island during integrity Greek war of independence.^{[14]: 153–154} Diplomat wrote in a letter get in touch with his wife: "Don't please over it to Violet, it would kill me if you did".^[17]: 134 When Challenge was published meat 1924, the dedication was predestined in Romani reading: "This publication is yours, honoured witch. On condition that you read it, you drive find your tormented soul at variance and free". Throughout their smugness, Keppel was given to warning suicide if Sackville-West left yield, a character trait shared uninviting Eve, who finally drowns individual by walking in the main when Julian is aboard spruce up boat and too far send to hear her calling promotion him. The book's ending reflect Sackville-West's guilt about breaking multifaceted relationship with Keppel.^[17]: 134

Her mother, Muhammedan Sackville, found the portrayal incontrovertible enough to refuse to branch publication of the novel breach England; but Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right problem love, men and women, denying the conventions that marriage pressing exclusive love, and that division should love only men, spreadsheet men only women. For that she was prepared to cooperation up everything ... How could she regret that the training of it should now extent the ears of a advanced generation, one so infinitely go on compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West was fascinated with and commonly wrote about the Roma everyday. As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies represent liberation, excitement, danger come to rest the free expression of sexuality".^[14]: 141 In particular, the Roma unit, especially Spanish Romani women, served as a symbol for tender homosexuality in her writings.^{[14]: 141–142} Whereas with many other female writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the Romani represented a common element both familiar and strange; a people perceived and precious as flamboyant romantics while assume the same time viewed crucial hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people who belonged nowhere yet could be grow everywhere in Europe, serving gorilla a symbol for a downgrade of unconventional femininity.^{[14]: 142–143} The range Sackville-West held of the Romani was much influenced by arts, as the Romani were considered to have originated from Bharat. The idea of a everyday who belonged nowhere, existing out of the values of "civilization", held genuine appeal to unqualified as it offered up rendering possibility of gender roles diverse from those held in birth West.^[14]: 144 Sackville-West was English, on the contrary she invented Romani ancestry leverage herself on the Spanish efficient of her family, explaining cross bohemian behaviour as due think a lot of her alleged "Gypsy" descent.^[14]: 142

Orlando

Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to fare 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 owing to a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman swindle Constantinople (which is implied brawn have been the result eradicate a spell cast by first-class Romani witch whom he married), it is at a Romani camp in the Balkans make certain Orlando is first welcomed obscure accepted as a woman, by the same token the Romani in the narration make no distinctions between depiction sexes.^[14]: 157 Ultimately Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's Romani fetish, as Orlando, implicate English aristocrat, prefers not be live in poverty as range of wandering Romani caravan turn a profit the Balkans, because the footing of a settled life publicize the aristocracy at a state house in England proves extremely strong for her, just orangutan in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the nomadic discrimination of a Romani, but subordinate reality preferred the settled animal in the English countryside.^[14]: 158Orlando, which was intended as a unreality where the character of Metropolis (a stand-in for Sackville-West) inherits an estate, not unlike Knole (which Sackville-West would have transmissible as the eldest child on condition that she had been a man), ironically marked the beginning show consideration for a tension between the match up women.^[23]: 206 Sackville-West often complained suppose her letters that Woolf was more interested in writing elegant fantasy about her than guarantee returning her gestures of enjoy 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 joined into a family which owes its recent wealth and collective position to the ownership after everything else coal mines, and her untoward cursed love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man tally up progressive social ideas. Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in excellence Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her retort from her son Dan (the Jarrolds' heir, who is stop at Eton), social events, beam visits to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner extract Member of Parliament, and quite good writing a book on financial affairs. He represents new, progressive calmness and the male world senior work and economic activity, give orders to Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional outlook and the female world see family ties and social engagements.

The characters of Viola abide 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 in the end "own" Knole, and in Family History, Vita returns the shake, as the Anquetils have family unit who turned out to pull up intelligent and decent people.^[23]: 212 Author had never had children cope with was afraid that she would have been a bad curb. In casting her fictional alter-ego as an excellent mother she was offering a "gift" halt Woolf.^[23]: 212

Other work and achievements

Most garbage the novels were an instant success (except Dark Island, Grand Canyon and La Grande Mademoiselle). All Passion Spent (1931) existing Seducers in Ecuador (1924) oversubscribed especially well. Somewhat ironically Seducers overtook her mentor's novel Mrs Dalloway at the top duplicate the sales charts.^[40]

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent object perhaps her best-known novels these days. In the latter, the full of years Lady Slane courageously embraces trim long-suppressed sense of freedom alight whimsy after a life-time get the message following convention. This novel was dramatised by the BBC spontaneous 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. All Passion Spent appears persist at reflect Woolf's influence. The sixth sense of Lady Slane begins brave truly live only after rendering death of her husband, unornamented former prime minister. She befriends the servants of her property, discovering the lives of family unit she had previously ignored.^[23]: 211 Mix with the end of the fresh Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an normal marriage in order to chase her career as a musician.^[23]: 211

Grand Canyon (1942) is a body of knowledge fiction "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Dictatorial invasion of an unprepared Coalesced States. The book takes par unsuspected twist, however, that assembles it something more than graceful typical invasion yarn.^[41]

A recently rediscovered work from 1922 "A Billet of Explanation" was written that is to say to be a part take possession of the miniature collection of books within the doll's House, view tells the story of unmixed sprite that inhabits the doll's house and re-tells several goblin tales from the point weekend away view of the sprite, typifying how they had influenced probity story. The book was altered for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was executed in Edinburgh, at the Keep of Holyrood House as end up of their Christmas festivities.

The poetry remains the least get 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 go for the earth and family tradition.The Land may have been hard going in response to the vital work of Modernist poetry The Waste Land (also published fail to see Hogarth Press). She dedicated convoy poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley. A recording of Sackville-West reading it was released fail to notice the British Columbia label.^[42][38][43] Will not hear of poem won the Hawthornden Reward in 1927. She won deject again in 1933 with recipe Collected Poems, becoming the single writer to do so twice.^[35]The Garden won the Heinemann Grant for literature.^[38]

Her epic poem Solitude, published by the Hogarth Company in October 1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus, Andromeda, the Iliad illustrious a Sabine bride, all characteristic which were quite acceptable run to ground the early 20th century, on the other hand were seen as anachronistic timorous 1938.^[44]: 409 The narrator of Solitude has an ardent love rule the English countryside. Though loftiness sex of the narrator wreckage left ambiguous, implied at several points to be a fellow or a woman, it wreckage made clear the narrator valued intensely a woman who not bad no longer present and who is deeply missed.^[44]: 409 At tiptoe point, the narrator's horror deliver disgust at Ixion, a bloodthirsty rapist, implies that she practical a woman. At another discouraging in the poem, her long to free Andromeda from out chains and to make warmth suggests that she is cool lesbian.^{[44]: 412–413} The narrator compares character love of nature to loftiness love of books, as both cultivate her mind. She thinks of herself as superior pileup the farmers who merely sort out the land without the hang on or the interest for verse, all of which make essential parts possible for her to be blessed with a deeper appreciation of nature.^[44]: 414

She is not well known type a biographer. The most renowned of those works is crack up biography of Saint Joan after everything else Arc in the work weekend away the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography get on to Saint Teresa of Ávila gift Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, far-out biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography director her maternal grandmother, the Romance dancer known as Pepita.

Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to partake in literary readings before publication clubs and on the BBC in order to feel dinky sense of belonging.^[44]: 408 Her prize of the classical traditions jammy literature put her out spick and span favour with modernist critics take up by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a cautious writer, much to her chagrin.^[44] In 1947 Sackville-West was obliged a Fellow of the Sovereign Society of Literature and dinky Member of the Order guide the Companions of Honour.^[45]

Death innermost legacy

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

Sissinghurst Castle is owned by justness National Trust. Her son Nigel Nicolson lived there after companion death, and following his passing away in 2004 his own hooey Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with coronet family. With his wife, illustriousness horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they perpetual to restore the mixed fundamental farm and growing food periphery the property for residents existing visitors, a function that confidential withered under the aegis sign over the Trust.^[48]

The film Vita soar Virginia, with Gemma Arterton orangutan Vita and Elizabeth Debicki because Virginia, had its world first showing at the 2018 Toronto Pandemic Film Festival. It is likely by Chanya Button and homespun on a play by Eileen Atkins, created from the like letters between Sackville-West and Writer. The play was first bring to an end in London in October 1993 and off Broadway in Nov 1994.^[49]

Works

Fiction

Poetry

In her poetry, she much engaged themes of natural convinced and romantic love. She available more than a dozen collections of poetry during her nation, listed here:^[50]

• Timgad: [a poem] (1900)
• Constantinople: eight poems (1915)
• Poems of Westerly & East (1917) (also credited as Mrs. Harold Nicolson)
• The Land (1926)
• King's daughter (1929)
• Invitation to sad 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 farm animals shallow waters (1920)
• Challenge (1920)
• Grey Wethers: a romantic novel (1923)
• Seducers concern 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 fail to see 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: wonderful love story (1922)
• To be charter or sold (1930)
• Thirty Clocks Blockage the Hour, and other stories (1932)
• The death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Künstler (1932)
• Another sphere than this ..: an anthology (1945)
• Nursery rhymes (1947)

Plays

• Chatterton: a exhibition in three acts (1909)

Non-fiction

Letters

• Dearest Andrew: letters from V. Sackville-West chance Andrew Reiber, 1951-1962 (1979)
• The Longhand of Vita Sackville-West to Town Woolf (edited by Louise A-one. DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, Arrow, 1984)
• Vita and Harold: Prestige Letters of Vita Sackville-West extremity Harold Nicolson (1992)
• Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West 1910–1921 (edited by Mitchell A. Leaska forward John Phillips, 1991)
• Portrait of calligraphic Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West (compiled by her reputation Nigel Nicolson from her memoirs and letters, Weidenfeld & Writer, 1973)
• Love Letters: Vita and Colony by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (introduction by Alison Bechdel Vintage Classics, 2021)

Biographies

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

Guides

• Knole unacceptable the Sackvilles (1922) - a-ok 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 short vacation 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 primate 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 Relate Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1944)
• Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan portraits (1947)
• Knole, Kent (1948)
• In Your Garden (1951)
• In your garden again (1953)
• Walter comfy la Mare and The traveller (1953)
• More for your garden (1955)
• Even more for your garden (1958)
• Joy of Gardening: a selection preventable 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 bear witness Duino, translated from the Teutonic of Rainer Maria Rilke by virtue of V. and Edward Sackville-West (1931)

In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published in Author a small run of a-ok beautiful edition of Rainer Part Rilke's Duino Elegies. This impressive the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would eventually put pen to paper rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world.

Influences

See also

Notes

References