Talk:Vita Sackville-West

message: WikiProject Biography Assessment
Narrowly a B. Inline citations should be next, and continued improvement on keeping her romances written in a neutral & encyclopedic tone.
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 18:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Class_parameter|Biography assessment rating]] comment 

message: Reverted this anon edit, which removed the 'Lesbian writers' category with justification 'cannot be lesbian and bisexual at the same time'.
Points against that:
* The categories don't claim it was at the same time; VSW's orientation might have shifted during her life.
* Both 'lesbian' and 'bisexual' have several different usages, and some of these do in fact overlap; see fuzziness at Sexual_orientation#Classification_and_boundaries. VSW falls into the overlap; while she married a man and had a child, she seems to have been predominantly oriented towards women after that. 
* Presumably as a result of the above, both these categories are defined on a "notable writers who identify, or who have been identified, as X" basis. Googling shows plenty of examples of VSW being identified as a lesbian, and quite a few more of her being identified as a bisexual (in fact, narrowing the search to '+"vita sackville-west" +"X writer"' produces a lot more support for 'lesbian' than 'bisexual'.) She clearly fits the definitions offered for both categories; if those definitions are faulty, that should be resolved on their Talk pages rather than here. 
--Calair 22:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lesbian & bisexual

message: I am a graduate student in English who has written an MA dissertation on Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis, and I see several major issues with this article which I would like (if there are no serious objects) to address through edits. First of all, I agree that the information on Sackville-West's literary works needs to be expanded (though I have no particular objection to the "gossip", since VSW's social life certainly impacted her work). For one thing, the bibliography mentions no works written after the mid-40s -- VSW continued writing until her death in 1962.
Secondly, there are fairly serious errors (on both this page and the article on Trefusis) in the description of this very important episode in VSW's life. For instance, the affair did not begin until 1918, when both women were in their late 20s; it did not end because VSW was seeing other women; et cetera. I am basing this on repeated readings of texts such as Nigel Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage, Trefusis' letters to VSW, the various biographies of VSW and Trefusis, Virginia Woolf's collected Diary and Correspondance, and so forth. I feel this section needs significant rewriting but did not want to move ahead on that without posting.
Thirdly, there are also misleading statements about the affair with Woolf. This affair had lasting repercussions in the lives of both VSW and Woolf and as such deserves (IMHO) serious treatment. Evelyn Irons is mentioned as another liason, which seems fine, but Mary Campbell (wife of poet Roy Campbell really should be discussed, since VSW's liason with her significantly impacted the lives of both Woolf and R. Campbell (among others). 
I don't want to spam further - but I wanted to post in case anyone had objections to my correcting/expanding the article. Always already 22:43, 2 November 2006
: That would be great. One thing you'd need to be careful of is previously-unpublished synthesis or interpretation (even if those are built on published sources) - see WP:OR for discussion of this - but attention and expansion by knowledgeable people is very welcome. Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources and Wikipedia:Citation templates might be useful to you here. --Calair 00:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have at it.  Content aside, the article requires significant editorial re-working. — Nat (talk) 20:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Major edits in order

message: :Image:Vitaswest.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 03:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Vitaswest.JPG

message: Please note that unsourced information cannot be included in Wikipedia articles. Please add only material for which you can cite a reliable source. dfg (talk) 18:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rosamund Grosvenor 

message: According to Vita's son Nigel Nicolson (*Portrait of A Marriage*), the physical component of her famous affair with Virginia Woolf consisted of exactly two occasions when they went to bed together.Even then, they may have just engaged in "bundling". Vita told her son she was aware of Woolf's extreme emotional fragility and did not want to cause her a mental breakdown with a tempestuously sexual affair.
The truly important component of their friendship seems to have been the fact that they enjoyed each other's company, as is documented numerous times in Woolf's journals. According to Virginia Woolf's nephew, who wrote a biography of her, she also appreciated Vita's aristocratic birth and connections. (Woolf was something of a snob.)
Younggoldchip (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure it was her son she told that to? I checked Portrait of a Marriage on open library and I found that info in a letter to her husband Harold, not Nigel although I could have missed it. I couldn't find anything about bundling, though. (Further up this talk page, it says that according to Virginia's biographer -which one?- they did nothing more than snuggle, corroborated in this article https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2017/1/11/virginia-woolf-struggling-and-never-being-perfect).Hermione Lee says that Vita may have been playing their physical relationship down to reassure Harold that she wouldn't leave him like she did for Violet, especially as her intense letters to Woolf seem to belie her insistence to Harold that she loved Virginia, but wasn't in love with her. Also, the letter to Harold was written in 1926, more stuff could have happened between them after that. Nigel Nicolson says of the affair with Woolf 'it is a travesty of their relationship to call it an affair'and that the physical element was tentative and not very successful, but he arguably plays down his mother's lesbian affairs to emphasise the his parents' loving, if unfaithful, marriage. Vita wanted Portrait of a Marriage to be about her affair with Violet and be called Portrait of a Lesbian Relationship, but Nigel changed the emphasis to her relationship with his father, unsuprisingly. One article I read says that lines in Virginia and Vita's letters that may allude to sex are crossed out. Furthermore, in her article Lighting the Cave, Louise de Salvo says that the word Potto is code for ' the sexual experiences they had shared' and that for the first time in her maturity Woolf was able to 'enter into an erotic relationship' and Victoria L Smith says in this article here https://ph.news.yahoo.com/know-virginia-woolfs-love-affair-110051656.html that the relationship was 'very passionate and very sexual even though initially their sexual relationship was downplayed and even ignored' The sources are contradictory, so there shouldn't be a definite statement of 'it was not very sexual' or'it was very sexual'. 188.29.228.13 (talk) 18:28, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Quentin Bell, later recalled: "There may have been - on balance I think that there probably was - some caressing, some bedding together. But whatever may have occurred between them of this nature, I doubt very much whether it was of a kind to excite Virginia or to satisfy Vita. As far as Virginia's life is concerned the point is of no great importance; what was, to her, important was the extent to which she was emotionally involved, the degree to which she was in love. One cannot give a straight answer to such questions but, if the test of passions be blindness, then her affections were not very deeply engaged." 188.29.17.218 (talk) 16:09, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: also apparently 'Not a peaceful evening' and symbols in Vita's diary indicate intimacy in November 1925 94.197.148.160 (talk) 22:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Affair With Virginia Woolf: Much Ado About Nothing 

message: Why on Earth did we have a pic of Leslie Stephen  next to the paragraph about Vita SW and Virginia Woolf?  Surely we should have a pic of Virginia (preferably one with Vita) or nothing, rather than Stephen, when there is no direct connection between L Stephen and Vita.  
I have replaced it with the wikicommons pic of Virginia.
IceDragon64 (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leslie Stephen  Pic? 

message: Rather pedantic perhaps, but she was the Hon. Vita Sackville-West by virtue of being the daughter of a peer. The impression in the first sentence is that the "Hon" arose from her husband's knighthood. IXIA (talk) 06:07, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Title

message: I have had to make many corrections to this article. I can't understand why someone would write it while having such a lack of knowledge of the subject (and indeed the English language). For example the Lords Sackville are barons not baronets (the latter being in effect an hereditary knighthood entitling the holder to carry the title 'Sir' and to append 'bt' - or in the past 'bart' - to his name). Knole is not called 'Knole House', simply 'Knole' and is near, not in, Sevenoaks. V S-W's mother was not 'Lady Victoria Sackville' she was Lady Sackville.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winehoff (talk • contribs) 09:40, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lord 

message: There is a discussion as to whether Ms. Sackville-West belongs in List of polyamorists and :Category:Polyamorous people at Category talk:Polyamorous people#Category and list.  --Andrewaskew (talk) 01:18, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polyamorous? 

message: The following was removed from the article by another user: "An English Heritage plaque on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1, commemorates both Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Her cremated remains were placed in the Sackville family vault at Withyham Parish Church in East Sussex". http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=10367559&PIpi=1858815. Feel free to add it again. Cyan22 (talk) 09:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The bare link provided is just a picture of the grave. It does not indicate anything about an English Heritage plaque on a house in Ebury Street. It also does not indicate that Sackville-West's ashes are in a family vault and that the vault is at Withyham Parish Church in East Sussex. Flyte35 (talk) 15:08, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blue Plaque and Vita Sackville-West's grave 

message: The text notes that Knole was bequeathed by V. Sackville-West's father to "his nephew Charles, who became the 4th Baron." However, Charles Sackville-West (1870-1962) was Lionel Sackville-West's brother, not his nephew.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Death Bredon (talk • contribs) 09:12, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inheritance 

message: I think the article is far too long at 75kb, filled with a great many direct quotes and tangential detail, not directly about her life or writing. According to WP:LENGTH we should aiming for 30-50kb to make it readable. WP does not encourage a lot of direct quoting as it's regarded as not encyclopedic.  See WP:LONGQUOTE. Accordingly I'd like to edit the sections on Violet, Persia and Virginia accordingly, reducing them significantly re quotes and non-essential details about flags, light bulbs, candle sticks, brickwork etc. I know it's wonderfully tempting, when reading a biography, to add in all the little details and long quotes where the subject seems to speak from the heart, but we need to keep things concise and encyclopedic. This is looking like a pretty thorough article these days - too much obsessed with sexual dalliances, but increasingly balanced out with aspects of the rest of VSW's life. Some assiduous cutting would help it greatly. Anna (talk) 21:19, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed edits

message: The section on Sissinghurst contains two statements that I think are inaccurate. The first is that "her father had disinherited her from Knole and a title". It was primogeniture, rather than her father, that made Vita ineligible. The second is in the first two sentences of the final paragraph, about relinquishing claims on Sissinghurst breaking her heart. Here, the author has mixed up Knole and Sissinghurst. The Vita quote is referring to the former, not the later, which didn't go to the Trust until 1966/7, years after Vita's death, Knole going in 1948. I'll amend in a while if there are no objections. KJP1 (talk) 13:14, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes. Thanks. Changes made. I think both errors were long standing mix ups in the article from before 2017. Good to fix them. Anna (talk) 10:51, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sissinghurst 

message: Is there any source for this Category? It is certainly true that Vita cross-dressed, but I'm not aware that she did so in wartime or, if she did, that it's being wartime was the reason for her cross-dressing.
KJP1 (talk) 19:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: [[List of wartime cross-dressers]]

message: In 1914, she had a passionate affair with historian Geoffrey Scott. Scott's marriage collapsed shortly thereafter...
But Geoffrey Scott's wiki page says:
The Scotts divorced in 1926, and she remarried (to Percy Lubbock) the same year. With little in the way of career, it has been suggested that an unlikely love affair with Vita Sackville-West from 1923 to 1925 spurred Scott into his later literary production. Valetude (talk) 20:20, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflict of dates 

message: Pepita's Wikipedia page says she was half gypsy via her mother, so Vita, her granddaughter, was one-eighth gypsy.The jstor article says her gypsy heritage was 'alleged', but then that Vita was 'conscious of her own gypsy blood', and called Pepita in her biography of her 'half gypsy and half aristocrat'. It then says the 'Sackville-Wests' gypsy descent was a topic of popular knowledge', and that Violet, Vita's lover, would reference it to Vita. Violet, and probably Vita, wrote love letters partly in Romany. Rosamund Grosvenor would call Vita 'Carmen', and Geoffrey Scott called her 'my gypsy'. Virginia Woolf was interested in it and referenced it in Orlando. 
.
Pepita could have lied about her mother being a gypsy - her Spanish dancer contemporary, Carolina 'la belle' Otero, falsely claimed to have a gypsy mother to get publicity - France was obsessed with Spain at the point Otero and Pepita became famous, and exoticised Spanish gypsies as passionate and sexual - see Bizet and Merimee's Carmen. But there doesn't seem to be hard evidence that she did lie. 92.40.1.80 (talk) 08:39, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  she did really have Romany ancestry, it wasn't invented -and the jstor article says she really had it, so has been cited wrongly