V. Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West, born on March 9, 1892, in Kent, England, was a notable British author, poet, and gardener whose work spanned several genres. She was born into an aristocratic family, inheriting a unique cultural heritage from her Spanish dancer grandmother and her father, the third Lord Sackville. Sackville-West's literary career began with her first published work in 1918, and she produced a significant body of work, including poetry, novels, biographies, and gardening books. Among her most recognized novels are "The Edwardians," "All Passion Spent," and "Family History," which explore themes of social class and individual choice.
Throughout her life, she maintained a complex marriage with diplomat Harold Nicolson, with both engaging in same-sex affairs while cultivating a deep intellectual bond evident in their extensive correspondence. Sackville-West was also a prominent figure in the literary circles of her time, with Virginia Woolf drawing inspiration from her for the novel "Orlando." Notably, she dedicated much of her later life to gardening at Sissinghurst Castle, where her passion for horticulture led her to write extensively on the subject. In recognition of her contributions, she was named a Companion of Honor in 1948. Sackville-West's legacy continues to resonate in both literary and gardening communities until her death from cancer in 1962.
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V. Sackville-West
- Born: March 8, 1892
- Birthplace: Kent, England
- Died: June 2, 1962
- Place of death: Kent, England
Biography
Victoria Mary Sackville-West was born in Kent, England, on March 9, 1892. Her father, Lionel Sackville-West, the third Lord Sackville, shared the same name as his father-in-law, the uncle from whom he inherited Knole Castle in Kent, England. Knole, given to Thomas Sackville, poet and playwright, by Queen Elizabeth I in 1556, remained in the same family through male heirs until it was given to the National Trust in 1947. Sackville-West was named after her mother, Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West, who was the daughter of an English diplomat and a famous Spanish dancer, Josefa Duran, known as Pepita.
Sackville-West was educated privately. Her first commercially published work, Poems of West and East, appeared in 1918. She was twenty-six years old and had been married to Harold Nicolson, a diplomat five years her senior, for six years. She had also given birth to three children: Benedict (1914), a stillborn child (1915), and Nigel (1917). Both she and her husband had same sex extramarital affairs from the beginning of their marriage, yet they wrote daily, intense letters to each other. After Nicolson’s death in 1968, their son Nigel discovered more than ten thousand items of correspondence between them and used these missives to write Portrait of a Marriage (1973), a biography of his parents.
Between 1918 and 1930, Sackville-West published three volumes of poetry, including The Land a 2,500-line poem celebrating English country life in its twilight, which won the 1927 Hawthornden Prize. She also published six novels, including The Edwardians, the first of her three most well-known novels written in the 1930’s; a volume of short stories; several biographies, including Knole and the Sackvilles, a history of her ancestral home; and two travel books written on visits to her husband’s foreign service postings in Teheran, Persia (now Iran).
Sackville-West continued her prolific writing in various genres until the end of her life. She wrote with little revision and in a nonexperimental style that remained popular with readers. Her work drew on her life and experiences: her aristocratic upbringing and her life at the fringes of aristocratic social life, her love of her homes and the countryside around them, and her travels. She signed her work V. Sackville-West to hide her identity as a woman.
Her novels The Edwardians, All Passion Spent, and Family History portray the aristocratic life Sackville-West knew intimately. The Edwardians chronicles the choice of Sebastian, the male heir of Chevron, a large estate similar to Knole, and his sister, Viola, both of whom reject the restrictive roles of their social class. All Passion Spent chronicles the choices made by Deborah, an octogenarian widow who severs ties with her children in order to finally live her own life. Family History chronicles a young man’s choice between his grandfather who made a fortune in coal and an unconventional lord of the manor who lives true to his own needs. These books were among the most successful published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf had been Sackville-West’s lover from 1924, when Sackville-West wrote Seducers in Ecuador for her, to 1928, when Woolf wrote Orlando, inspired by Sackville-West and Knole.
In 1930, Nicolson gave up diplomatic work for journalism. He also wrote books and participated in politics, becoming a representative of West Leicester to Parliament. The couple settled in Sissinghurst Castle not far from Knole. Sackville-West devoted herself to developing the gardens at the castle and this enabled her to write books on gardening as well as a newspaper column on gardening that ran from 1946 to 1961. Her poem, The Garden, won the 1946 Heinemann Prize.
Sackville-West served in the Kent’s Women’s Land Army during World War II. In 1948 she was named Companion of Honor. She published the novel No Signposts in the Sea in 1961, the year before she died of cancer.