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.
Through her first Bloomsbury connections, LS developed working friendships with Leonard Woolf
and Vita Sackville-West
: Woolf extended his late wife
's encouragement of LS's writing and ultimately published her memoir, Ancient Melodies, with...
Friends, Associates
Naomi Royde-Smith
Another close friend of NRS
, J. D. Beresford
, a highly-regarded novelist, was also an important friend to Dorothy Richardson
, and a mentor and support to Macaulay as well as Royde-Smith, and such...
In 1933 Vita Sackville-West
formally introduced CSJ
and Edith Craig
to Virginia Woolf
.Woolf was not as fascinated by St John as she was by Craig and Terry, and saw her as a burden on...
Friends, Associates
Amabel Williams-Ellis
Her political activities kept AWE
at the centre of London's socially-conscious literary circles. Guests at The Well of Loneliness tea-party included Virginia Woolf
, Rose Macaulay
, Vita Sackville-West
, G. B. Shaw
, and...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
VW
, dining at Clive Bell
's, met Vita Sackville-West
(and her husband Harold Nicolson
) for the first time.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
73
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)...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
seems to have first met Hilda Matheson
just before the latter took over the role of central player in Vita Sackville-West
's love-life. But Matheson (director of talks for the BBC
, soon to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Anne Clifford
LAC
's sons (three from her first, two from her second marriage) did not survive. (The longest-lived, born on 2 February 1620; survived less than six months.) Her two daughters married earls. She lived to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Virginia Woolf
VW
stayed with Vita Sackville-West
at Long Barn for the weekend: this was the beginning of their affair.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
93
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 51n10
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
The husbands of the two women, followed by Violet's father George Keppel
, made a melodramatic dash by private plane to get them back, which they did after heavy emotional scenes.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.