Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Vita Sackville-West
-
Standard Name: Sackville-West, Vita
Birth Name: Victoria Mary Sackville-West
Nickname: Mar
Self-constructed Name: Vita Sackville-West
Self-constructed Name: V. Sackville-West
Married Name: Victoria Mary Nicolson
Self-constructed Name: Julian Sackville-West
Self-constructed Name: David Sackville-West
Styled: the Honourable Victoria Mary Sackville-West
VSW
wrote prolifically and almost obsessively from her childhood in the early twentieth century. She began with poems, plays, and fiction about her family's romantic links to English history. As an adult she used these genres to describe or transform her own complicated love-life: lesbian relationships, triangular relationships, love between masculine women and feminine men. Her best-known poems, The Land and The Garden, create classically-descended georgic from the traditional labour of the Kentish countryside, and the related art of gardening. Many novels (some she called pot-boilers) use conventional style to delineate upper-class society, but she also made forays (first inspired by Virginia Woolf
) into the experimental. She wrote history, biography, travel books, diaries, and letters. She was a popular and productive journalist, both in print and on the radio, whose topics included literature, gardening, and the status of women (though she refused the label of feminist). Her gardening writings and her actual gardens remain her best-known works. Her masterpiece, the Sissinghurst gardens, are the most-visited in Britain.
It was well attended by women writers. Ivy Compton-Burnett
and Bryher
were there, and H. D.
and Vita Sackville-West
were among the other readers on the evening's programme. Dorothy Wellesley
was to have read also...
Occupation
Dorothy Wellesley
At Penns during the Second World WarDW
wrote of her fear—An explosion. I thought of my son. (Oh, don't think!) I thought of Hilda
(she is safe)—but also of solitude, of her...
Occupation
Viola Meynell
Her first broadcast was, appropriately, on her mother, Alice Meynell
. The BBC director praised her for being the best first-time presenter he had ever seen. She followed up with programmes on Francis Thompson
,...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
Once the press was repaired they printed their handbill. Their first book (Two Stories, containing Virginia's The Mark on the Wall and Leonard's Three Jews) had to be set up and printed...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
The Press, which began as therapy and for the purpose of publishing the works of its owners, grew into a major engine of modern culture and thought.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
In October 1928 VW
addressed in turn the students of the two Cambridge women's colleges: first Newnham
, then Girton
. She developed these lectures on women and writing into A Room of One's Own...
Material Conditions of Writing
Christopher St John
In the 1930s when CSJ
was in love with Vita Sackville-West
, she wrote a love journal about their relationship as well. After her death, Vi Pym
found this text among other diaries while sorting...
Material Conditions of Writing
Violet Trefusis
VT
often wrote privately about her intimate experiences and perceptions. When, during the summer of 1920, in the midst of the controversy surrounding her relationship with Vita Sackville-West
, she was sent to Scotland with...
Literary responses
E. Arnot Robertson
J. B. Priestley
, focussing on the noble-savage aspects of this story, complained that its characters do not really come from Borneo, they come from Rousseau
and cloud-cuckoo land.
Devlin, Polly, and E. Arnot Robertson. “Introduction”. Four Frightened People, Virago, p. vii - xix.
ix
Vita Sackville West
, however...
Literary responses
Edith Sitwell
Sitwell later wrote, the attitude of certain of the audience was so threatening that I was warned to stay on the platform, hidden by the curtain, until they got tired of waiting for me and...
Thomas McCarthy
wrote in the Cork Literary Review that this volume consolidates what is already an achieved and unique presence in Irish poetry. Her mind is astonishing—within her world Kafka
dines comfortably with Vita Sackville-West
.
The Gallery Press. http://www.gallerypress.com/home.html.
Literary responses
Charlotte Mew
May Sinclair
thought Madeleine magnificent, having depths & depths of passion & of sheer beauty.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
191
She also enjoyed the high Victorian melodrama of Mew's reading aloud.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
192
Despite her efforts to bring The Farmer's...
Literary responses
Viola Tree
After the publication of VT
's book, Vita Sackville-West
wrote to Woolf, how could you publish Viola? . . . I don't like you to sell your soul.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
3: 268n1
Woolf replied, Why read memoirs...
Literary responses
Sylvia Townsend Warner
STW
's friend David Garnett
seriously disapproved of the latter part of the book and the heroine's characterisation. However, Vita Sackville-West
particularly liked the part of the story that Garnett criticised.
Harman, Claire. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. Chatto and Windus.