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.
VT
was gathering material for her upcoming roman à clef, Broderie Anglaise, about herself, Vita Sackville-West
, and Woolf
(with whom Vita had been intimately involved for several years). Woolf wrote about the meeting...
Friends, Associates
Dorothy Wellesley
Among these readers, Ruth Pitter
became a valued friend of DW
,
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
175
as she did too of Vita Sackville-West
. Another friend of Wellesley's later years was Sir Ifor Evans
.
Geniesse, Jane Fletcher. Passionate Nomad. Random House.
327
Friends, Associates
H. D.
After her move to England, Ezra Pound
introduced HD to his circle of friends, many of whom were important figures in the modernist movement. They included W. B. Yeats
, T. S. Eliot
,...
Fictionalization
Violet Trefusis
In addition to her role in Challenge, VT
appeared in several creative pieces by others. The most famous example is Virginia Woolf
's Orlando, which reimagines VT
as the seductive Princess Sasha, who...
Fictionalization
Virginia Woolf
Versions of VW
appeared in many writings by other authors both during and after her own lifetime. On 8 March 1928, Vita Sackville-West
informed her that Phyllis Bottome
(a popular author and great Woolf fan)...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
This engagement, like most in VT
's life, was short-lived: she ended it before the close of the year. (For his part, Gerald Wellesley proposed to Dorothy Ashton in 1914. Their marriage lasted until 1922...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
's husband was a secretary in the Diplomatic Service; he told her that some day he would like to be an architect.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
119
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 49
Vita Sackville-West
remarked that the couple do squabble...
Family and Intimate relationships
Christopher St John
CSJ
, smitten by Vita Sackville-West
, spent one passionate night—never repeated—with the object of her desire.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
253
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
VT
's powerful erotic connection to Vita Sackville-West
, whom she had met in childhood, continued in varying forms from 1910 onwards, but its most intense period began in 1918.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.