Virginia Woolf

Vita Sackville-West

'I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...' At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf met the renowned author, aristocrat - and sapphist - Vita Sackville-West. Virginia wrote in her diary that she didn't think much of Vita's conversation, but she did think very highly of her legs. It was to be the start of almost twenty years of flirtation, friendship, and literary collaboration. Their correspondence ended only with Virginia's death in 1941. Intimate and playful, these selected letters and diary entries allow us to hear these women's constantly changing feelings for each other in their own words. Eavesdrop on the affair that inspired Virginia to write her most fantastical novel, Orlando, and discover a relationship that - even a hundred years later - feels radical and relatable. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM ALISON BECHDEL, AUTHOR OF FUN HOME AND CREATOR OF THE BECHDEL TEST.

Vita and Virginia

Love Letters

A charming extraordinary early 20th century novel about family relationships. When the great statesman Lord Slane dies, everyone assumes his dutiful wife will slowly fade away, the paying guest of each of her six children. But Lady Slane surprises everyone by escaping to a rented house in Hampstead where she revels in her new freedom, revives youthful ambitions and gathers some very unsuitable companions. Irreverent, entertaining and insightful, this is a tale of the unexpected joys of growing older. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOANNA LUMLEY

All Passion Spent

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KATE WILLIAMS Sebastian is young, handsome and romantic, the heir to a vast and beautiful English country estate. He is a fixed feature in the eternal round of lavish parties, intrigues and traditions at the cold, decadent heart of Edwardian high society. Everyone knows the role he must play, but Sebastian isn't sure he wants the part. Position, privilege and wealth are his, if he can resist the lure of a brave new world.

The Edwardians

Love Letters: Vita and Virginia

Covering the period 1946-50, In Your Garden is the first volume in a series of four anthologies of V. Sackville-West's articles, which are arranged according to the month in which they were published. Also included are two longer essays by V. Sackville-West, describing a rare seventeenth-century gardening manual and the garden at Hidcote Manor, together with an extract from her 1937 book Some Flowers, which contains vignette descriptions of her favourites.

In Your Garden

Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on a Fleet Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger. Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands never to be visited and his conversations with Laura, Edmund finds himself rethinking all his values. A voyage on many levels, those long purposeless days at sea find Edumnd relinquishing the past as he discovers the joys and the pain of a love he is simultaneously determined to conceal.

No Signposts in the Sea

Victoria 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

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIET NICOLSON Vita Sackville-West was an extraordinary woman from a long line of extraordinary women – this book tells their stories. Her grandmother Pepita, daughter of an old-clothes pedlar, made her fortune as a dancer and had a scandalous affair with an English diplomat. Their illegitimate daughter Victoria, Vita's mother, spent her childhood hidden in a convent but went on to be the glamorous mistress of Knole, one of the grandest old houses in England. Vita brings her legendary wit, passion and eccentricity to this colourful family portrait.

Pepita

A Note of Explanation is a previously unknown work by iconic writer Vita Sackville-West. Written in 1922, it was recently rediscovered as a miniature book in Queen Mary's dollhouse in Windsor Castle. Witty and stylish, the story recounts the antics of a time-traveling sprite who inhabits the dollhouse. This illustrated, cloth-bound edition presents the story for the first time since 1924. Lovers of literature and history will rejoice in this irresistible collector's item and one-of-a-kind literary gift.

An Undiscovered Story from Queen Mary's Dollhouse

A Note of Explanation

Sarah Raven

Describes one of Britain's most beautiful, elegant and famous gardens and the life of the gardener responsible, who was a poet, a best-selling author and inspiration and friend to Virginia Woolf.

Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden

Sissinghurst

Rainer Maria Rilke

Edward Sackville-West

In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Wolf's Hogarth Press printed a few hundred copies of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita Sackville-West and her cousin Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would go on to be rendered in English more than 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists around the world.

Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests' translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of the Elegies. Rilke's enchanting journey through love, death and solitude appears here in language of breathtaking immediacy and imagistic power. Featuring an introduction by critic Lesley Chamberlain, this new edition casts fresh light on one of European literature's great masterpieces.

Duino Elegies

Two short novels tell the tales of Arthur Lomax, whose life is alarmingly transformed by a pair of blue spectacles, and Peregrine Chase, whose life is beautifully transformed by a Tudor house he inherits

Seducers in Ecuador and the Heir

Scrivi sempre a mezzanotte. Lettere d'amore e desiderio

In this unique gardening chronicle Vita Sackville-West weaves together simple, honest accounts of her horticultural experiences throughout the year with exquisite writing and poetic description. Whether singing the praises of sweet-briar, cyclamen, Indian pinks and the Strawberry grape, or giving practical advice on pruning roses, planting bulbs, overcoming frosts and making the most of a small space, her writings on the art of good gardening are both instructive and delightful.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens

Toda Pasion Apagada

em uma edição inédita no brasil e com introdução de alison bechdel, as cartas trocadas entre virginia woolf e vita sackville-west apresentam toda a poesia de um sublime caso de amor “Estou reduzida a uma coisa que deseja Virginia. Elaborei uma linda carta para você nas horas insones de pesadelo noturnas, e ela se desvaneceu por completo: apenas sinto sua falta...” Durante um jantar na Inglaterra em 1922, ocorre um breve encontro entre uma envolvente e exuberante aristocrata com uma tímida e arguta escritora. Uma desbrava o mundo e as nuances de tudo que ele pode oferecer, a outra explora os limites selvagens de sua própria imaginação. O início de uma história íntima, intensa e inevitável. Vita Sackville-West e Virginia Woolf parecem pertencer a realidades diferentes, mas encantadas pela personalidade e talento uma da outra, abrem espaço em suas vidas para se conhecer intimamente, inspirar suas produções literárias e enfrentar, lado a lado, tradições, desilusões, doenças, mudanças e injustiças. Com vidas que espelharam e subverteram as concepções de feminismo, igualdade, casamento, linguagem e arte, o legado eterno dessas duas mulheres extraordinárias reverbera até hoje — mais de cem anos depois de se apaixonarem. Com introdução de Alison Bechdel — quadrinista e criadora do icônico Teste de Bechdel —, Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West: Cartas de Amor reúne uma seleção de correspondências e trechos de diários das duas escritoras, apresentando as intempéries e o florescimento de uma verdadeira história de amor. “Apesar de todo o famoso fluxo de consciência da prosa de Woolf, West é talvez responsável pela linha mais romântica das correspondências, absolutamente excruciante em sua simplicidade crua.” — Cosmopolitan “Juntas, as duas floresceram criativamente.” — The Advocate “A paixão de uma pela outra ligou-se a mim com o novo terreno que elas demarcavam para todas as mulheres.” — Alison Bechdel para The Guardian

Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West: cartas de amor

The heir

«Es buenísimo. No conocía el alcance de tu perspicacia, ni a esa Vita pícara, inquietante, avispada y esquiva», le escribe Virginia Woolf a su amiga Vita Sackville-West al recibir el manuscrito de Pasajera a Teherán. En este libro la autora relata el viaje que emprendió en enero de 1926, en tren y en barco, por el centro y el sur de Europa, gran parte de Oriente Próximo y Oriente Medio, para reunirse con su marido, Harold Nicolson, destinado en la capital de la antigua Persia por la diplomacia británica. Un año después regresó a Irán, y cruzó a pie con una pequeña caravana de mulas la cordillera Bajtiari, uno de los territorios más agrestes del país. De esta expedición, surgieron las páginas de Doce días, incluidas también en este volumen, de prosa enérgica y repletas de ingeniosas impresiones.

Pasajera a Teherán

"Soudain une jeune femme apparut en haut des marches, adossée à la fenêtre, avec la pluie qui frappait violemment les vitres et, à l'arrière-plan, les sommets embrumés. Aucun doute, c'était Paola, la star des bals du Westmorland. Bien qu'elle fût en contre-jour, elle me fit d'entrée beaucoup d'effet : elle était brune, svelte avec pourtant quelques rondeurs, l'allure souple, élancée et féline des Italiennes. [...] Comment la qualifier ? Elle avait du style. Du chic. On ne peut pas dire qu'elle était belle - des lèvres rouges, pulpeuses, un petit nez, le teint pâle, les yeux noirs - mais elle avait une sorte de grâce, à la fois naturelle et sophistiquée [...]. C'était saisissant ; elle contrôlait si totalement la situation que j'en arrivais à me sentir un provincial maladroit en présence d'une femme du monde." Est-elle vraiment des leurs ? Les Godavary, à vrai dire, ne forment pas une famille très unie. C'est plutôt un commun désir de fuite, une lâcheté sournoise qui les rassemblent... Paola, issue du remariage du défunt Noble Godavary avec une étrangère, préfère pour sa part tenir fermement les rênes du destin, quitte à se débarrasser de toute contrainte familiale - ce que les dernières volontés de son père vont lui permettre de faire, d'éclatante façon.

Vita Sackville-West

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