= Vita_Sackville-West =

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= Vita_Sackville-West =
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Introduction
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Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 - 2
June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English
author and garden designer.

Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as well
as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a
dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels during her life. She was
twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in
1927 for her pastoral epic, 'The Land', and in 1933 for her 'Collected
Poems'. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of 'Orlando: A
Biography', by her friend and lover Virginia Woolf.

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

Antecedents
=============
Victoria Mary Sackville-West -- called Vita, to distinguish her from
her mother -- was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, the Kent home of
Sackville-West's aristocratic ancestors. She was the only child of
cousins Victoria Sackville-West and Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron
Sackville. Vita's mother, the illegitimate daughter of Lionel
Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville and the Spanish dancer Pepita
(Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had been raised in a Parisian
convent.

Although the marriage of Sackville-West's parents was initially happy,
the couple drifted apart shortly after her birth. Lionel took a
mistress, an opera singer who came to live with them at Knole.

Knole had been given to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the
sixteenth century. The Sackville-West family followed the English
aristocracy's inheritance customs, preventing Vita from inheriting
Knole upon the death of her father; this was a source of life-long
bitterness for her. The house followed the title, and was bequeathed
instead by her father to his brother Charles, who became the 4th
Baron.

Early life
============
Sackville-West was initially taught at home by governesses and later
attended Helen Wolff's school for girls, an exclusive day school in
Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund
Grosvenor. She did not befriend local children and found it hard to
make friends at school. Her biographers characterise her childhood as
one filled by loneliness and isolation. She wrote prolifically at
Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and
1910, ballads and many plays, some in French. Her lack of formal
education led to later shyness with her peers, such as those in the
Bloomsbury Group. She felt herself to be sluggish of mind and she was
never at the intellectual heart of her social group.

Sackville-West's apparently Roma lineage introduced a passion for
"gypsy" ways, a culture she perceived to be hot-blooded, heart-led,
dark, and romantic. It informed the stormy nature of many of her later
love affairs and was a strong theme in her writing. Sackville-West
visited Roma camps and felt herself to be at one with them.

Vita's mother had a wide array of famous lovers, including financier
J. P. Morgan and Sir John Murray Scott (from 1897 until his death in
1912). Scott, secretary to the couple who inherited and developed the
Wallace Collection, was a devoted companion and Lady Sackville and he
were rarely apart during their years together. During her childhood,
Vita spent a great deal of time in Scott's apartments in Paris,
perfecting her already fluent French.

First loves
=============
Sackville-West debuted in 1910. She was wooed by Orazio Pucci, son of
a distinguished Florentine family; by Lord Granby (later 9th Duke of
Rutland); and by Lord Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood), among
others. In 1924 she had a passionate affair with historian Geoffrey
Scott. Scott's marriage collapsed shortly thereafter, as was often the
fallout with Sackville-West's affairs, all with women after this point
(as most of them had been beforehand).

Sackville-West fell in love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888-1944), who
was four years her senior. In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare say
I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and
I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out," but she
saw no real conflict. Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, invited Rosamund
to visit the family at their villa in Monte Carlo (1910). Rosamund
also stayed with Vita at Knole House, at Murray Scott's pied-à-terre
on the Rue Laffitte in Paris, and at Sluie, Scott's shooting lodge in
the Scottish Highlands, near Banchory. Their secret relationship ended
in 1913 when Vita married.

Sackville-West was more deeply involved with Violet Keppel, daughter
of the Hon. George Keppel and his wife, Alice Keppel. The sexual
relationship began when they were both in their teens and strongly
influenced them for years. Both later married and became writers.

Marriage to Harold Nicolson
=============================
Sackville-West was courted for 18 months by young diplomat Harold
Nicolson, whom she found to be a secretive character. She writes that
the wooing was entirely chaste and throughout they did not so much as
kiss. In 1913, at age 21, Vita married him in the private chapel at
Knole. Vita's parents were opposed to the marriage on the grounds that
"penniless" Nicolson had an annual income of only £250. He was the
third secretary at the British Embassy in Constantinople at the time.
Another of Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, had an annual income
of £100,000, owned vast acres of land and was heir to an old title,
Duke of Rutland.

The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband
had same-sex relationships before and during their marriage, as did
some of the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with whom they
had connections. Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically divided
into two: one side of her personality was more feminine, soft,
submissive, and attracted to men while the other side was more
masculine, hard, aggressive, and attracted to women.
Following the pattern of his father's career, Harold Nicolson was at
various times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of
Parliament, and author of biographies and novels. After the wedding
the couple lived in Cihangir, a suburb of Constantinople (now
Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved
Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife did not appeal to
her. It was only during this time that she attempted to don, with good
grace, the part of a "correct and adoring wife of the brilliant young
diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote. When she became pregnant, in
the summer of 1914, the couple returned to England to ensure that she
could give birth in a British hospital.

The family lived at 182 Ebury Street, Belgravia and bought Long Barn
in Kent as a country house (1915-1930). They employed the architect
Edwin Lutyens to make improvements to the house. The British
declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, following
Ottoman naval attacks on Russia, precluded any return to
Constantinople.

The couple had two children: Benedict (1914-1978), an art historian,
and Nigel (1917-2004), a well-known editor, politician, and writer.
Another son was stillborn in 1915.

Relationship with Violet Keppel
=================================
Sackville-West continued to receive devoted letters from her lover
Violet Keppel. She was deeply upset to read of Keppel's engagement to
Major Denys Trefusis. Her response was to travel to Paris to see
Keppel and persuade her to honour their commitment. Keppel, depressed
and suicidal, did eventually marry her fiancé, under pressure from her
mother, though Keppel made it clear that she did not love her husband.
Sackville-West called the marriage her own greatest failure.

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

The mothers of both women joined forces to sabotage the relationship
and force their daughters back to their husbands. But they were
unsuccessful. Sackville-West often dressed as a man, styled as
Keppel's husband. The two women made a bond to remain faithful to one
another, pledging that neither would engage in sexual relations with
their husbands.

Keppel continued to pursue her lover to great lengths, until
Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took their toll. In
November 1919, while staying at Monte Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that
she felt very low, entertaining thoughts of suicide, believing that
Nicolson would be better off without her. In 1920 the lovers ran off
again to France together and their husbands chased after them in a
small two-seater aeroplane. Sackville-West heard allegations that
Keppel and her husband Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she
broke off the relationship as the lesbian oath of fidelity had been
broken. Despite the rift, the two women stayed devoted to one another.

Persia
========
From 1925 to 1927, Nicolson lived in Tehran where Sackville-West often
visited him. Sackville-West's book 'A Passenger to Tehran' recounts
her time there. The couple were involved in planning the coronation of
Rezā Khan and got to know the six-year old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza
well. She also visited and wrote about the former capital of Isfahan
to see the Safavid palaces.

Relationship with Virginia Woolf
==================================
Sackville-West's relationship with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf
began in 1925 and ended in 1935, reaching its height between 1925 and
1928. The American scholar Louise DeSalvo wrote that the ten years
while they were together were the artistic peak of both women's
careers, owing to the positive influence they had on one another:
"neither had ever written so much so well, and neither would ever
again reach this peak of accomplishment".

In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf at a dinner
party in London. Though Sackville-West came from an aristocratic
family that was far richer than Woolf's own, the women bonded over
their confined childhoods and emotionally absent parents. Woolf knew
about Sackville-West's relationship with Keppel and was impressed by
her free spirit.

Sackville-West greatly admired Woolf's writings, considering her to be
the better author. She told Woolf in one letter: "I contrast my
illiterate writing with your scholarly one, and I am ashamed". Though
Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability to write quickly, she was
inclined to believe that the volumes were written too much in haste:
"Vita's prose is too fluent".

As the two grew close, Woolf disclosed that as a child she had been
abused by her step-brother. It was largely due to Sackville-West's
support that Woolf began to heal from the trauma, allowing her for the
first time to have a satisfying erotic relationship. Woolf purchased a
mirror during a trip to France with Sackville-West, saying she felt
she could look in a mirror for the first time in 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 nervous ailments had been misdiagnosed, and that she should
focus on her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn to
rest.

To help the Woolfs, Sackville-West chose their Hogarth Press to be her
publisher. 'Seducers in Ecuador', the first Sackville-West novel to be
published by Hogarth, sold only 1,500 copies in 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
always value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of the
Press's fortunes allowed Woolf to write more experimental novels such
as 'The Waves'. Though contemporary critics consider Woolf a better
writer, critics in the 1920s viewed Sackville-West as more
accomplished, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.

Sackville-West loved to travel, frequently going to France, Spain and
to visit Nicolson in Persia. These trips were emotionally draining for
Woolf, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel 'To the
Lighthouse', noteworthy for its theme of longing for someone absent,
was partly inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences.
Sackville-West inspired Woolf to write one of her most famous novels,
'Orlando', featuring a protagonist who changes sex over the centuries.
This work was described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the
longest and most charming love-letter in literature."

There were, however, tensions in the relationship. Woolf was often
bothered by what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging
that Sackville-West's great need for sex led her to take up with
anyone who struck her fancy. In 'A Room of One's Own' (1929), Woolf
attacks patriarchal inheritance laws. This was an implicit criticism
of Sackville-West, who never questioned the leading social and
political position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She felt
that Sackville-West was unable to critique the system she was both a
part of and, to a certain extent, a victim of. In the 1930s they
clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley
and the New Party (later renamed the British Union of Fascists), and
they were at odds over the imminent war. Sackville-West supported
rearmament while Woolf remained loyal to her pacifism; this
contributed to the distancing of their relationship in 1935.

However, the two women reconnected in 1937 and remained close until
Woolf's death in 1941.

Other lovers
==============
One of Sackville-West's male suitors, Henry Lascelles, would later
marry the Princess Royal and become the 6th Earl of Harewood.

In 1927, Sackville-West had an affair with Mary Garman, a member of
the Bloomsbury Group; between 1929 and 1931, she maintained a
relationship with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department. In
1931, Sackville-West was in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn
Irons and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder. Irons had interviewed
Sackville-West after her novel 'The Edwardians' had become a
best-seller.

Sissinghurst
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In 1930 the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near
Cranbrook, Kent. It had once been owned by Vita's ancestors. This gave
it a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and
a title. Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and the creation of the
gardens would be a joint labour of love that would last many decades,
first entailing years of clearing debris from the land. Nicolson
provided the architectural structure, with strong classical lines,
which would frame his wife's innovative informal planting schemes. She
created a new and experimental system of enclosures or rooms, such as
the White Garden, Rose Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden and Nuttery.
She also innovated single colour-themed gardens and design principles
orientating the visitors' experience to discovery and exploration. Her
first garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915-1930) was experimental, a place
of learning by trial and error and she carried over her ideas and
projects to Sissinghurst, using her hard won experience. Sissinghurst
was first opened to the public in 1938.

Sackville-West took up writing again in 1930 after a six-year break as
she needed money to pay for Sissinghurst. Nicolson, having left the
Foreign Office, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She
also had to pay tuition for her two sons to attend Eton College. She
felt she had become a better writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf.
In 1947 she began a weekly column in 'The Observer' called "In your
Garden", although she was not a trained horticulturist or designer.
She continued the very popular column until a year before her death,
and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one of the most famous and
visited gardens in England. In 1948 she became a founder member of the
National Trust's garden committee. The grounds are now run by the
National Trust. She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the
Royal Horticultural Society.

''Portrait of a Marriage''
============================
In the early 1920s Sackville-West wrote a memoir of her relationships.
In it she sought to explain both why she had chosen to stay with
Nicolson and why she had fallen in love with Violet Keppel. The work,
titled 'Portrait of a Marriage', was not published until 1973. In the
book she uses metaphors from nature to present her account as truthful
and honest, describing her life as a "bog" and a "swamp", suggesting
that her personal life was naturally unappealing and unpleasant.
Sackville-West stated that she wanted to explain her sexuality, which
she presented as being at the core of her personality. She wrote that
in the future "it will be recognized that many more people of my type
do exist than under the present-day system of hypocrisy is commonly
admitted".

Reflecting a certain ambivalence about her sexuality, Sackville-West
presented her sexual desires for Keppel as both "deviant" and
"natural", as if she herself was uncertain of whether her sexuality
was normal or not, though the American scholar Georgia Johnston has
argued that Sackville-West's confusion on this point was due to her
wish to have this memoir published one day. In this regard,
Sackville-West wrote of her deep desire and love for Keppel while at
same time declaring her "shame" about this "duality with which I was
too weak and too self-indulgent to struggle". At various times,
Sackville-West called herself a "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and
"unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as a tempting, if
degrading, object of her desire. Sackville-West called for a "spirit
of candor" in society that would allow for tolerance of gay and
bisexual people. Much influenced by the theories promoted by
sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von
Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West
sometimes wrote of her sexuality as abnormal and wrong and due to some
psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality as
the norm that she wanted, but failed to live up to.

Several times, Sackville-West stated that she wrote 'Portrait of a
Marriage' for scientific purposes so people would be able to
understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite her
self-condemnation, to present her sexuality as in some way normal.
Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably
Carpenter and Ellis, had argued that homosexuality and bisexuality
were in fact normal, and despite her condemning herself, her use of a
"scientific" approach backed up with quotes from Ellis and Carpenter
allowed her to present her bisexuality as implicitly normal. Writing
in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that the
person Harold married wasn't entirely and wholly what he had thought
of her, and that the person who loves and owns Violet isn't a second
person, because each suits each other". Sackville-West presented her
sexuality as part of the personality she had been born with,
portraying herself as an accursed woman who should be the object of
sympathy, not condemnation.

In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published 'Portrait of a
Marriage', he was uncertain if he was going to be charged with
obscenity, going to considerable lengths to stress the legitimacy of a
love for a person of the same sex in his introduction. Despite
portraying herself as in some way "deviant" because of her feelings
for women, Sackville-West also wrote in 'Portrait of a Marriage' of
the discovery and acceptance of her bisexuality as a teenager as the
joyous "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did
not really see herself as a woman with "deviant" sexuality, as this
statement contradicted what she had written at the beginning of the
book about her "perverted" sexuality. Johnson wrote that
Sackville-West, in presenting the lesbian side of herself in terms
that depicted Keppel as evil and Nicolson as good, was the only way
possible at the time to express this side of her personality, writing
"even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present
any type of acceptable self."

The memoir was dramatised by the BBC (and PBS in North America) in
1990, starring Janet McTeer as Vita, and Cathryn Harrison as Violet.
The series won four BAFTAs.

''Challenge''
===============
Sackville-West's novel 'Challenge' (1923) also bears witness to her
affair with Keppel: Sackville-West and Keppel had started writing this
book as a collaborative endeavour. It was published in America but
banned in the UK until 1974.

The male character's name, Julian, had been Sackville-West's nickname
when passing as a man. 'Challenge' (first entitled 'Rebellion', then
'Enchantment', then 'Vanity' and at some point 'Foam'), is a 'roman à
clef' with the character of Julian being a male version of
Sackville-West and Eve, the woman he desires so passionately is
Keppel. Notably, Sackville-West in 'Challenge' defends Keppel against
several of the insults Nicolson had applied to her in his letters to
her; for example Nicolson often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig",
and in the book Julian goes out of his way to say that Eve is neither
a swine nor a pig. In the book, Julian says that "Eve is not a 'little
swine', she just has the weaknesses and faults of femininity carried
to the 9th degree, but is also redeemed by a self-sacrifice, which is
very feminine".

Reflecting her obsession with the Romani people, Eve is portrayed as a
seductive Romani woman with an "insinuating femininity" that Julian
cannot resist, calling him away from his political mission of winning
independence on a fictional Greek island during the Greek war of
independence. Nicolson wrote in a letter to his wife: "Don't 'please'
dedicate it to Violet, it would kill me if you did". When 'Challenge'
was published in 1924, the dedication was written in Romani reading:
"This book is yours, honoured witch. If you read it, you will find
your tormented soul changed and free". Throughout their relationship,
Keppel was given to threatening suicide if Sackville-West left her, a
character trait shared by Eve, who finally drowns herself by walking
in the sea when Julian is aboard a boat and too far off to hear her
calling for him. The book's ending reflected Sackville-West's guilt
about breaking her relationship with Keppel.

Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to
refuse to allow publication of the novel in England; but Vita's son
Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right to love,
men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands
exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only
women. For this she was prepared to give up everything ... How could
she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new
generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"

Sackville-West was fascinated with and often wrote about the Roma
people. As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies
represent liberation, excitement, danger and the free expression of
sexuality". In particular, the Roma women, especially Spanish Romani
women, served as a symbol for female homosexuality in her writings. As
with many other female writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the
Romani represented a social element both familiar and strange; a
people perceived and admired as flamboyant romantics while at the same
time viewed and hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people
who belonged nowhere yet could be found everywhere in Europe, serving
as a symbol for a sort of unconventional femininity. The picture
Sackville-West held of the Romani was much influenced by orientalism,
as the Romani were believed to have originated from India. The idea of
a people who belonged nowhere, existing outside of the values of
"civilization", held genuine appeal to her as it offered up the
possibility of gender roles different from those held in the West.
Sackville-West was English, but she invented Romani ancestry for
herself on the Spanish side of her family, explaining her bohemian
behaviour as due to her alleged "Gypsy" descent.

''Orlando''
=============
Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to write her novel 'Orlando'
(1928), featuring a protagonist who changes sex over the centuries.
Reflecting Sackville-West's interest in the Romani, when Orlando goes
to bed as a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman in Constantinople
(which is implied might have been the result of a spell cast by a
Romani witch whom he married), it is at a Romani camp in the Balkans
that Orlando is first welcomed and accepted as a woman, as the Romani
in the novel make no distinctions between the sexes. Ultimately Woolf
satirizes Sackville-West's Romani fetish, as Orlando, an English
aristocrat, prefers not to live in poverty as part of wandering Romani
caravan in the Balkans, because the call of a settled life of the
aristocracy at a country house in England proves too strong for her,
just as in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the
nomadic life of a Romani, but in reality preferred the settled life in
the English countryside. 'Orlando', which was intended as a fantasy
where the character of Orlando (a stand-in for Sackville-West)
inherits an estate, not unlike Knole (which Sackville-West would have
inherited as the eldest child if she had been a man), ironically
marked the beginning of a tension between the two women.
Sackville-West often complained in her letters that Woolf was more
interested in writing a fantasy about her than in returning her
gestures of affection in the real world.

''Family History''
====================
Sackville-West's 1932 novel 'Family History' tells the story of Evelyn
Jarrold, a rich widow who married into a family which owes its recent
wealth and social position to the ownership of coal mines, and her
ill-fated love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man with
progressive social ideas. Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in the
Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her apart from her son Dan
(the Jarrolds' heir, who is away at Eton), social events, and visits
to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner and Member of
Parliament, and is writing a book on economics. He represents new,
progressive values and the male world of work and economic activity,
and Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional values and the female world
of family ties and social engagements.

The characters of Viola and Leonard Anquetil in 'Family History' are
socialists, pacifists and feminists, thinly veiled versions of
Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In 'Orlando', Woolf allowed Vita to
finally "own" Knole, and in 'Family History', Vita returns the
gesture, as the Anquetils have children who turned out to be
intelligent and decent people. Woolf had never had children and was
afraid that she would have been a bad mother. In casting her fictional
alter-ego as an excellent mother she was offering a "gift" to Woolf.

Other work and achievements
=============================
Most of the novels were an immediate success (except 'Dark Island',
'Grand Canyon' and 'La Grande Mademoiselle'). 'All Passion Spent'
(1931) and 'Seducers in Ecuador' (1924) sold especially well. Somewhat
ironically 'Seducers' overtook her mentor's novel 'Mrs Dalloway' at
the top of the sales charts.

'The Edwardians' (1930) and 'All Passion Spent' are perhaps her
best-known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane
courageously embraces a long-suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy
after a life-time of following convention. This novel was dramatised
by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. 'All Passion Spent'
appears to reflect Woolf's influence. The character of Lady Slane
begins to truly live only after the death of her husband, a former
prime minister. She befriends the servants of her estate, discovering
the lives of people she had previously ignored. At the end of the
novel Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an arranged
marriage in order to pursue her career as a musician.

'Grand Canyon' (1942) is a science fiction "cautionary tale" (as she
termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The
book takes an unsuspected twist, however, that makes it something more
than a typical invasion yarn.

A recently rediscovered work from 1922 "A Note of Explanation" was
written specifically to be a part of the miniature collection of books
within the doll's House, and tells the story of a sprite that inhabits
the doll's house and re-tells several fairy tales from the point of
view of the sprite, indicating how they had influenced the story.
The book was adapted for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A
Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was performed in Edinburgh, at
the Palace of Holyrood House as part of their Christmas festivities.

The poetry remains the least known 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 for the earth and family tradition.'The
Land' may have been written in response to the central work of
Modernist poetry 'The Waste Land' (also published by Hogarth Press).
She dedicated her poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley. A recording of
Sackville-West reading it was released by the British Columbia label.
Her poem won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again in 1933
with her 'Collected Poems', becoming the only writer to do so twice.
'The Garden' won the Heinemann Award for literature.

Her epic poem 'Solitude', published by the Hogarth Press in October
1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus,
Andromeda, the 'Iliad' and a Sabine bride, all of which were quite
acceptable in the early 20th century, but were seen as anachronistic
by 1938. The narrator of 'Solitude' has an ardent love of the English
countryside. Though the sex of the narrator is left ambiguous, implied
at various points to be a man or a woman, it is made clear the
narrator loved intensely a woman who is no longer present and who is
deeply missed. At one point, the narrator's horror and disgust at
Ixion, a brutal rapist, implies that she is a woman. At another point
in the poem, her desire to free Andromeda from her chains and to make
love suggests that she is a lesbian. The narrator compares the love of
nature to the love of books, as both cultivate her mind. She thinks of
herself as superior to the farmers who merely work the land without
the time or the interest for poetry, all of which make it possible for
her to have a deeper appreciation of nature.

She is not well known as a biographer. The most famous of those works
is her biography of Saint Joan of Arc in the work of the same name.
Additionally, she composed a dual biography of Saint Teresa of Ávila
and Thérèse of Lisieux entitled 'The Eagle and the Dove,' a biography
of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography of her maternal grandmother,
the Spanish dancer known as 'Pepita'.

Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to
participate in literary readings before book clubs and on the BBC in
order to feel a sense of belonging. Her love of the classical
traditions in literature put her out of favour with modernist critics
and by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a dated writer, much to
her chagrin. In 1947 Sackville-West was made a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature and a Member of the Order of the Companions of
Honour.

Death and legacy
======================================================================
Vita Sackville-West died at Sissinghurst in June 1962, aged 70, from
abdominal cancer. She was cremated and ashes buried in the family
crypt within the church at Withyham, East Sussex.

Sissinghurst Castle is owned by the National Trust. Her son Nigel
Nicolson lived there after her death, and following his death in 2004
his own son Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with his
family. With his wife, the horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they
committed to restore the mixed working farm and growing food on the
property for residents and visitors, a function that had withered
under the aegis of the Trust.

The film 'Vita and Virginia', with Gemma Arterton as Vita and
Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia, had its world premiere at the 2018
Toronto International Film Festival. It is directed by Chanya Button
and based on a play by Eileen Atkins, created from the love letters
between Sackville-West and Woolf. The play was first performed in
London in October 1993 and off Broadway in November 1994.

Poetry
========
In her poetry, she often engaged themes of natural life and romantic
love. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her
life, listed here:
* 'Timgad: [a poem]' (1900)
* 'Constantinople: eight poems' (1915)
* 'Poems of West & East' (1917) (also credited as Mrs. Harold
Nicolson)
* 'The Land' (1926)
* 'King's daughter' (1929)
* 'Invitation to cast out care' (1931)
* 'Sissinghurst' (1931)
* 'Collected poems' (1933)
* 'Solitude: a poem' (1938)
* 'The Garden' (1946)
* 'Lost poem (or A Madder Caress)' (2013)

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

Children's books
==================
* 'A Note of Explanation' (written for Queen Mary's Dolls' House in
1924, published posthumously in 2017)

Short stories and novellas
============================
* 'Orchard and vineyard' (1892)
* 'The heir: a love story' (1922)
* 'To be let or sold' (1930)
* 'Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour, and other stories' (1932)
* 'The death of Noble Godavary' and 'Gottfried Künstler' (1932)
* 'Another world than this ..: an anthology' (1945)
* 'Nursery rhymes' (1947)

Plays
=======
* 'Chatterton: a drama in three acts' (1909)

Letters
=========
* 'Dearest Andrew: letters from V. Sackville-West to Andrew Reiber,
1951-1962' (1979)
* 'The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf' (edited by
Louise A. DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, Arrow, 1984)
* 'Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold
Nicolson' (1992)
* 'Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita
Sackville-West 1910-1921' (edited by Mitchell A. Leaska and John
Phillips, 1991)
* 'Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson' by
Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West (compiled by her son Nigel
Nicolson from her journals and letters, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1973)
* 'Love Letters: Vita and Virginia by Virginia Woolf and Vita
Sackville-West' (introduction by Alison Bechdel Vintage Classics,
2021)

Biographies
=============
* 'Aphra Behn, the incomparable Astrea' (Gerald Howe, 1927)
* 'Andrew Marvell' (1929)
* 'Saint Joan of Arc' (Doubleday 1936, reprinted M. Joseph 1969)
* 'Pepita' (Doubleday, 1937, reprinted Hogarth Press 1970)
* 'The eagle and the dove, a Study in Contrasts: St. Teresa of Avila
and St. Thérèse of Lisieux' (M. Joseph, 1943)
* 'Daughter of France: the life of Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans,
duchesse de Montpensier, 1627-1693, La Grande Mademoiselle' (1959)

Guides
========
* 'Knole and the Sackvilles' (1922) - a history of her ancestral home
* 'Passenger to Teheran' (Hogarth Press 1926, reprinted Tauris Parke
Paperbacks 2007, )
* 'Twelve Days: an account of 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 as '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)
* 'English country houses' (William Collins, 1941, illustrated)
* 'The Women's Land Army' (M. Joseph / Ministry of Agriculture and
Fisheries, 1944)
* 'Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan portraits' (1947)
* 'Knole, Kent' (1948)
* 'In Your Garden' (1951)
* 'In your garden again' (1953)
* 'Walter de la Mare and The traveller' (1953)
* 'More for your garden' (1955)
* 'Even more for your garden' (1958)
* 'Joy of Gardening: a selection for 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 of Duino', translated
from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke by V. and Edward Sackville-West
(1931)

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

Influences
============
* 'Orlando: A Biography' by Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press, 1928)
* 'Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West' by Matthew
Dennison (2014)

See also
======================================================================
* List of Bloomsbury Group people

Sources
======================================================================
* Carney, Michael: 'Stoker: The Life of Hilda Matheson', privately
published, Llangynog, 1999.
* Ghani, Sirus: 'Iran and the Rise of the Reza Shah: From Qajar
Collapse to Pahlavi Power', I. B.Tauris, 2000.
* Glendinning, Victoria: 'Vita: The Life of Vita Sackville-West',
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
* Lord, Tony: 'Gardening at Sissinghurst', Frances Lincoln and
National Trust, 2000.
* Nicolson, Nigel: "Introduction", from 'A Passenger to Tehran', I.B
Tauris, 2007.
* Sackville-West, Vita: 'Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings',
Preface by Nigel Nicolson, St. Martin's Press, 2015.
*Souhami, Diana: 'Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter: A Biography', St.
Martin's Press, 2014.

Further reading
======================================================================
* Cross, Robert and Ann Ravenscroft-Hulme: 'Vita Sackville-West: A
Bibliography', Oak Knoll Press, 1999.
* Eberle, Iwona: 'Eve with a Spade: Women, Gardens, and Literature in
the Nineteenth Century', Grin, 2011.
* Wolf, Peggy: 'Sternenlieder und Grabgesänge. Vita Sackville-West:
Eine kommentierte Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen
Veröffentlichungen von ihr und über sie 1930-2005.' Daphne-Verlag,
2006.
*
* Stevens, Michael : 'V. Sackville-West: A Critical Biography',
Scribners, 1974.
*Troutmann, Joanne: 'The Jessamy Brides: The Friendship of Virginia
Woolf and Vita Sackville-West', Pennsylvania State University Press,
1973.

External links
======================================================================
*
*
*
[https://www.npg.org.uk/assets/images/groupsMedia/familyTrees/Sackville-West_family.pdf
Sackville-West family tree] at National Portrait Gallery, London
*
[https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sackville-west-vita-1892-1962
Vita Sackville-West] Encyclopedia.com
* [https://www.britannica.com/biography/V-Sackville-West Vita
Sackville-West] Encyclopedia Britannica
;Letters
*
[https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/kent/sissinghurst-castle-garden
Vita Sackville-West's letters, diaries, notebooks, and correspondence]
Sissinghurst Castle, Kent
* Vita Sackville-West Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, Yale University
* [https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAD6996 Vita
Sackville-West's early diaries] Lilly Library, Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
* [https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/findingaids/15/ correspondence
1947-1961, from Vita Sackville-West to Grace Mountcastle] Colby
College
;Books
* [http://users.library.fullerton.edu/scox/vitaswbib.htm Fuller list
of Vita Sackville-West's publications]
*
*
*
*
*
[https://digitalcollections.vicu.utoronto.ca/RS/pages/search.php?term=Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West] E. J. Pratt Library Victoria University, Toronto
* [https://www.modernistarchives.com/person/vita-sackville-west Vita
Sackville-West] Modernist Archives Publishing Project

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=========
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