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.
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
,...
Friends, Associates
Gertrude Bell
Vita Sackville-West
stayed with GB
in Baghdad; during the visit she discussed Bell by letter with her friend Virginia Woolf
.
Howell, Georgina. Daughter of the Desert: the Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell. Macmillan.
502
Winstone, Harry Victor Frederick. Gertrude Bell. J. Cape.
255
Friends, Associates
Ruth Pitter
RP
knew T. S. Eliot
well enough to enjoy a courtly encounter with him at a bus stop, but she felt his great innovations had not necessarily been a good thing for English poetry, and...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Since VW
moved in a variety of social circles, her range of literary acquaintance was very wide. Her associates included such established, celebrated writers as Thomas Hardy and Henry James
, popular authors such as...
In the early 1930s—when the persecution of lesbians in general and Radclyffe Hall
in particular was raging in the wake of The Well of Loneliness trial—EC
, Christopher St John
, and Clare Atwood
Grant, Joy. Stella Benson: A Biography. Macmillan.
244, 245-6
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
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.
97-8,127
Sackville-West and later biographers...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Wellesley
DW
's great literary friendship with Vita Sackville-West
incorporated an erotic affair, carefully concealed by both. Wellesley delighted in sharing travel and other activities with Sackville-West, and minded deeply when she was replaced in Vita's...