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.
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.
20-1
Textual Features
Violet Trefusis
The novel was written in English and is set in Spain. VT
's biographer Diana Souhami suggests that VT wrote herself into this piece as Cécile, an innocent young wife, Vita Sackville-West
as both...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
Violet Keppel (later VT
) and Vita Sackville-West
began their most public displays of affection: dressed as a man, Sackville-West strolled down London streets with Trefusis on her arm.
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo.
140
Textual Production
Violet Trefusis
On 14 May 1918, four days after the end of her first romantic holiday with VT
, Vita Sackville-West
began writing her novel Challenge (titled Rebellion in its early stages). It is clearly based on...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Trefusis
VT
and Vita Sackville-West
were persuaded to end their elopement of several days and return home from their intended new life at Amiens in France.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
105, 108
Trefusis, Violet. “Introduction”. Violet to Vita, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, Methuen, pp. 1-52.
34-6
Nicolson, Nigel, and Vita Sackville-West. Portrait of a Marriage. Futura.
143
Textual Features
Violet Trefusis
When the novel was published under Vita
's name in America in 1924 (it remained suppressed in Britain until 1973), it featured a dedication written in Spanish Romany, the adopted language of central characters Julian...
After she became a marketable name, AU
received an offer from the Sunday Times to write a gardening column on the model of Vita Sackville-West
's, but she declined. She took up reviewing. Faced with...
Textual Production
Marina Warner
MW
published Joan of Arc
: The Image of Female Heroism, her study of the legendary Maid of Orleans who became a fearless soldier, a martyr, and eventually a saint.
Warner's biography of Joan...
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.
86
Reception
Augusta Webster
Although some readers disagreed with AW
's decision not to capitalize the first word of each line (a move that Vita Sackville-West
later recognised as a significant departure from established poetic practice, and that AW
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
The Athenæum suggested that this was not a translation or even a paraphrase, but rather a metrical adaptation of a fantastic tale, told in verse which is well suited to its subject.