Victoria Sackville-West

At nineteen, Sebastian is a duke and heir to a vast country estate. A deep sense of tradition binds him to his inheritance, though he loathes the social circus he is a part of. Deception, infidelity and greed hide beneath the glittering surface of good manners. Among the guests at a lavish party are two people who will change Sebastian's life: Lady Roehampton, who will initiate him in the art of love; and Leonard Anquetil, a polar explorer who will lead Sebastian and his free-spirited sister Viola to question their destiny. A portrait of fashionable society at the height of the era, THE EDWARDIANS revealed all that was glamorous about the period - and all that was to lead to its downfall. First published in 1930, it was Vita Sackville-West's most successful book.

The Edwardians

Nigel Nicolson

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of her love affair with Violet Keppel Trefusis in 1920 is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson combines his mother's vivid memoir of escapade with what he learned from copious family letters and explains the context of this romantic crisis. He also describes how Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson went on to live the rest of their lives in harmonious marriage.

Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson

Portrait of a Marriage

Vita Sackville-West wrote Saint Joan of Arc in 1936 at the age of forty-four, and had, at that point, already been writing for thirty years. At fourteen, Sackville-West published her first book, and at fourteen Joan of Arc first heard the voices. Joan was seventeen when she took command of the armies of France--a peasant girl in the early fifteenth century in charge of a nation's forces. At nineteen she was captured by the British and tried as a witch by a church court. Before her twentieth birthday she was burned at the stake. In 1920 she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. In a clever, brisk voice, Vita Sackville-West tells the triumphant story of a French peasant girl raised in a country torn apart by the Hundred Years' War who rose from poverty to military greatness. With dazzling insight and clarity, Sackville-West breathes new life into Joan of Arc's beautiful and tragic story.

Born, January 6, 1412, Burned as a Heretic, May 20, 1431, Canonized as a Saint, May 16, 1920

Saint Joan of Arc

Vita Sackville-West

In 1926 Vita travelled to Iran to visit her husband. Her route was deliberately slow-paced. She returned to England in an equally circuitous manner and despite travelling under dangerous circumstances, through communist Russia and Poland in the midst of revolution, her humour and sense of adventure never failed.

Passenger to Teheran

Written by the author of The Land, Portrait of a Marriage and All Passion Spent , this is the story of Mr Jerrold who is proud of his fortune. He has no pride in his sons, but his daughter-in-law is his favourite until she develops a relationship with a rising Labour politician.

Family History

A collection of writings by the seminal modernist includes poetry, essays, travel narratives, a dream notebook, journal entries, and excerpts from her novels.

Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

George Plank

Vita Sackville-West is known as much for her creation of the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle as for her numerous novels, poems and gardening articles. Written in 1926, The Land is a nostalgic celebration of the Kentish countryside through the seasons. It won the Hawthornden Prize and sold over 100,000 copies.

The Land

A Joy of Gardening

Virginia Woolf

Louise A. DeSalvo

Mitchell Alexander Leaska

This beautiful collection of correspondence reconstructs the lesbian romance between two literary greats, featuring five hundred letters spanning twenty years.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf

Tragic struggle between man and wife for the Island of Storm, off the coast of Brittany.

The Dark Island

Knole and the Sackvilles

Adorata creatura. Le lettere di Vita Sackville-West a Virginia Woolf

Country Notes

Seducers in Ecuador

The Easter Party

A Collection Taken from In Your Garden, In Your Garden Again, More for Your Garden

V. Sackville-West's Garden Book

As his elderly relative lay dying, insurance salesman Mr. Chase stands in the wings, waiting to inherit the manor of the soon to be deceased. Yet once in possession, Chase deems the home entirely impractical and a burden whose only useful purpose is to be sold for capital. For him, the house holds none of the charm that had so beguiled its former mistress. But as the wheels are set in motion for the sale, an inexplicable change begins to take place within him, and soon Chase finds himself falling deeply--and irrevocably--in love with the very house he had once so scorned.

A Love Story

The Heir

A collection of correspondence between the poet-novelist and her diplomat-politician-author husband spans fifty years to recount their turbulent and open marriage, Vita's lesbian affair with Violet Trefusis, their colorful circle of friends, and more. 25,000 first printing.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson

Vita and Harold

CHALLENGE was Vita Sackville-West's second novel. It was ready to go to print in 1920, but the aughor suddenly changed her mind. This was not because she lacked confidence in her work,but because of the scandal it would have caused. CHALLENGE remained unpublished for over fifty years. Vita's love affair with Violet Trefusis had reached its peak, and, eloping to France, they decided to abandon everything and everyone - children and husbands included - to spend the rest of their lives together. Although they returned to their families eventually, CHALLENGE remains a testament of their love, and was written during that period. The hero, Julian, might be a Byronic young Englishman, and Eve the woman he adores; it may be an adventure tale about a revolt on a Greek island. But really, this is a love story, written in the presence of the beloved, and inspired by her. And, as its title implies, the novel is a challenge to the society that condemned Vita and her lover.

Victoria Sackville-West

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