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.
Alice Keppel
strongly disapproved of the relationship between Violet and Vita
for many reasons, including the threat posed by the growing scandal over it to Sonia Keppel
's upcoming marriage into a staunchly conservative English family.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
167-8
Textual Production
Violet Trefusis
VT
's acquaintance Nancy Mitford
suggested that VT
should call this book Here Lies Madame Trefusis.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
300
In a letter of July 1941, Vita Sackville-West
told Trefusis that she ought to dedicate this book...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
Unrealistically, she expected that Sackville-West
would somehow rescue her from this marriage, but when Vita stayed on with her husband Harold
at Versailles instead of intervening to stop the wedding, Violet wrote to her, [y]ou...
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...
Violence
Violet Trefusis
Distraught, Vita
followed the honeymooning couple to the ParisRitz
and had a troubled reunion with Violet. Vita later wrote, I took her there, I treated her savagely, I made love to her, I didn't...
Reception
Violet Trefusis
Michael Holroyd
suggests in the Afterword to A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters—Absent Fathers, 2010, that scholarly interest in Vita Sackville-West
created a biassed climate for the reception of VT
. Whatever vessel set...
Violence
Violet Trefusis
Though she never explicitly mentions her love affair with Vita
, VT
blames herself for the marital troubles which she and Denys
suffered. I hasten to add that the fault was entirely mine. I was...
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.
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
At a mutual friend's tea party at Aldford Street, Park Lane, Violet Keppel (later VT
) met Vita Sackville-West
for the first time.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
72
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
Trefusis also made peace with one of her great loves, Vita Sackville-West
. Sackville-West visited St Loup with her husband Harold Nicolson
in 1950 and 1951; she went by herself to stay at Ombrellino in 1952.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
298
Education
Violet Trefusis
VT
(then Keppel) began attending Helen Wolff
's School for Girls in South Audley Street, London, with her sister Sonia Keppel
and her friend Vita Sackville-West
.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
85
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
Violet Keppel (later VT
) and Vita Sackville-West
went together to Polperro in Cornwall. They stayed at a fisherman's cottage lent to them by novelist Hugh Walpole
.
Trefusis, Violet. “Introduction”. Violet to Vita, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, Methuen, pp. 1-52.