page_title: Vita Sackville-West
section_title: Virginia Woolf
hierarchical_section_title: Vita Sackville-West / Biography / Virginia Woolf
caption_attribution_description: Studio portrait presented by Esther Cloudman Dunn to the Smith College Library.
context_page_description: Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH, usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.
  She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf.
  She had a longstanding column in The Observer and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson.
context_section_description: Her relationship with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf began in 1925 and ended in 1935, reaching its height between 1925–28. The American scholar Louise DeSalvo wrote that the ten years while they were together were the artistic peak of both women's careers, owing to the positive influence they had on one another: "neither had ever written so much so well, and neither would ever again reach this peak of accomplishment".
  In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf at a dinner party in London. Though Sackville-West came from an aristocratic family that was far richer than Woolf's own, the women bonded over their confined childhoods and emotionally absent parents. Woolf knew about Sackville-West's relationship with Keppel and was impressed by her free spirit.
  Sackville-West greatly admired Woolf's writings, considering her to be the better author. She told Woolf in one letter: "I contrast my illiterate writing with your scholarly one, and I am ashamed". Though Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability to write quickly, she was inclined to believe that the volumes were written too much in haste: "Vita's prose is too fluent".
  As the two grew close, Woolf disclosed how she had been abused by her step-brother as a child. It was largely due to Sackville-West's support that Woolf began to heal from the trauma, allowing her for the first time to have a satisfying erotic relationship. Woolf purchased a mirror during a trip to France with Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a mirror for the first time in her life. Sackville-West's support gave Woolf greater confidence and helped her cast off her self-image of a sickly semi-recluse. She persuaded Woolf that her nervous ailments had been misdiagnosed, and that she should focus on her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn to rest.
  To help the Woolfs, Sackville-West chose their Hogarth Press to be her publisher. Seducers in Ecuador, the first Sackville-West novel to be published by Hogarth, sold only 1,500 copies in its first year. The Edwardians, published next, sold 30,000 copies in its first six months. The boost helped Hogarth financially, though Woolf did not always value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of the Press's fortunes allowed Woolf to write more experimental novels such as The Waves Though contemporary critics consider Woolf a better writer, critics in the 1920s viewed Sackville-West as more accomplished, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.
  Sackville-West loved to travel, frequently going to France, Spain and to visit Nicolson in Persia. These trips were emotionally draining for Woolf, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, noteworthy for its theme of longing for someone absent, was partly inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to write one of her most famous novels, Orlando, featuring a protagonist who changes sex over the centuries. This work was described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature."
  There were, however, tensions in the relationship. Woolf was often bothered by what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's great need for sex led her to take up with anyone who struck her fancy. In A Room Of One's Own (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal inheritance laws. This was an implicit criticism of Sackville-West, who never questioned the leading social and political position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was unable to critique the system she was both a part of and, to a certain extent, a victim of. In the 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union of Fascists), and they were at odds over the imminent war. Sackville-West supported rearmament while Woolf remained loyal to her pacifism, leading to the end of their relationship in 1935.
caption: Sackville-West, 1926
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