Vita Sackville West Biography and List of Works

English poet and novelist, born into an old aristocratic family, proprietors of Knole House in Kent. Vita Sackville-West wrote about the Kentish countryside and was the chief model for Orlando in Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name (1928). Her best-known poem, THE LAND, celebrates the Kentish countryside and was awarded the Hawthorne Prize in 1927.

The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision,
Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves
with sun.
('Winter' from The Land)

Sackville-West was the only child of Lionel Edward, third Baron of Sackville, and Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West, his first cousin and the illegitimate daughter of the diplomat Sir Lionel Sackville-West. She was educated privately and began to write poetry as a child. By the age of eighteen she had produced several novels and plays, publishing her first works in the 1910s.

In 1913 she married the diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson, with whom she lived with in Persia and then at the Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. At first she played her role as a dutiful wife, but then her husband admitted that he had a male lover. The marriage endured however, despite their homosexual affairs. They had two children; the art critic BenedictNicholson and the published author Nigel Nicholson. In 1923 the art critic Clive Bell introduced Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, and the two became lovers. Her other life long companion was Violet Trefusis, the daughter of Alice Keppel, Edward VII's mistress.

The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and different skies,
And night with different stars.
(from The King's Daughter, 1930)

Violet and Vita had first met as children and their relationship continued until well after their respective marriages. At one point they 'eloped' to France and their husbands had to persuade them to return to England. This long relationship was the subject of Sackville-West's secret diary and provided material for her third novel, CHALLENGE. It depicted a Greek vineyard owner who is torn between his love for a woman and for his island home.

Sackville-West's father died in 1928 and her brother became the fourth Baron Sackville, inheriting Knole. In 1929 her husband decided to resign from the foreign service and devote himself to writing. They purchased Sissinghurst Castle, a near-derelict house, and began to restore it. In the 1930s Sackville-West published THE EDWARDIANS (1930), ALL PASSION SPENT (1931), and FAMILY HISTORY (1932), which portrayed English upper-class manners and life and which became bestsellers. PEPITA (1937) depicts the story of Sackville-West's grandmother who was a Spanish dancer. Sackville-West also wrote several books about gardening and kept a regular column in the Observer from 1946.The Royal Horticultural society rewarded her passion in 1955.

In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She died of cancer on June 2, 1962. Sackville-West believed in equal rights for women. She is best remembered for her novels but her most enduring work was perhaps the garden at Sissinghurst Castle. In 1973 Her son Nigel Nicholson published a book based on his mother' journal - describing his parents' private life and marriage in a revealing fashion.

For further reading: Vita Sackville-West by S.R. West (1972); Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicholson (1973). Sackville-West: A Critical Biography by M.V. Stevens (1974); The Jessamy Brides by J. Trautman (1973); Vita's Other World: A Gardening Biography of Vita Sackville-West by J. Brown (1985); The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, ed by L.A. DeSalvo and M.A. Leaska (1985) Violet to Vita, ed. by M.A. Leaska and J. Phillips (1989); Vita and Harold, ed, by N. Nicholson (1992) Vita and Virginia by S. Raitt (1993) - Note: The Hogarth Press (see Virginia Woolf) used to print books in Sissinghurst Castle's tower, including 13 titles by Sackville-West. The most important work was T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

CHATTERTON, A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS, (1909)