Violet Trefusis

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Though VT is best known to literary history as a lover of English writer and aristocrat Vita Sackville-West , she wrote and published in a range of genres throughout her life, which spanned much of the twentieth century. These include diaries and letters, novels, memoirs, travel journalism, and radio broadcasting, composed in both English and French.
  • BirthName: Violet Keppel
  • Self-constructed: Violette
    She signed her name this way in French.
    Masucci, Tiziana. Violet Trefusis. 2013, http://www.violettrefusis.com/en.
  • Married: Trefusis
Head-and-shoulders portrait sketch of Violet Trefusis by William Bruce Ellis Ranken, 1919. Against a purple background, she looks straight at the viewer, wearing a light purple dress and bright red lipstick. Her hair is chin-length, curly, and brown.

Milestones

6 June 1894

Violet Keppel (later VT ) was born at Wilson Crescent, London, the elder of two sisters.
Trefusis, Violet. “Introduction”. Violet to Vita, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, Methuen, 1989, pp. 1-52.
5

Spring 1905

The ten-year-old child Violet Keppel (later VT ) began a diary during her first trip to Paris.
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
22
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo, 1997.
71

By mid-November 1952

VT published her second and best-known memoir, Don't Look Round, with illustrations by her friend and later biographer, Philippe Jullian .
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
2650 (14 November 1952): 735
Trefusis, Violet, and Philippe Jullian. Don’t Look Round. Hutchinson, 1953.
3-4

1 March 1972

VT died of starvation, the effect of a malabsorption disease, in Florence.
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
138
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo, 1997.
306

By late August 1972

VT 's last work, From Dusk to Dawn, was published posthumously in London by Tom Stacey Ltd .
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
3678 (25 August 1972): 985
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Sharpe, Henrietta. A Solitary Woman: A Life of Violet Trefusis. Constable, 1981.
185

Biography

Birth and Influences

6 June 1894

Violet Keppel (later VT ) was born at Wilson Crescent, London, the elder of two sisters.
Trefusis, Violet. “Introduction”. Violet to Vita, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, Methuen, 1989, pp. 1-52.
5

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