Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West (Victoria Mary Sackville-West), 1892-1962, English writer; wife of Sir Harold Nicolson and granddaughter of the 2d Baron Sackville. Both she and Nicolson were members of the Bloomsbury group . Her poems in The Land (1926), Selected Poems (1941), and The Garden (1946) won praise, but she is better known for her novels, The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). Among her other works are Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), about her family's past, and her charming fictional portrait of her grandmother, Pepita (1937). All Sackville-West's books reveal her wit, her vocation as a poet, and her aristocratic heritage.

Bibliography: See Portrait of a Marriage (1973) by her son Nigel Nicolson; studies by S. R. Watson (1972) and M. Stevens (1974).

Sackville-West, Vita ( Victoria Mary) (1892–1962) English poet and novelist. A friend of the writer Virginia Woolf and a member of the Bloomsbury Group, her best-known works include The Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931), and the long poem “The Land” (1926).

Sackville-West, Hon. Victoria Mary (‘Vita’), CH (1892–1962), poet and novelist, was born at Knole, Kent, about which she wrote Knole and the Sackvilles (1922). In 1913 she married Harold Nicolson, with whom she travelled widely before settling at Sissinghurst, Kent, where she devoted much time to gardening. In 1922 she met Virginia Woolf, whose Orlando (1928) was inspired by their close friendship. Her other works include a pastoral poem, The Land (1926, Hawthornden Prize), All Passion Spent (1931, novel), Collected Poems (1933), and many works on travel, gardening, and literary topics. Her unorthodox marriage was described by her son Nigel Nicolson in Portrait of a Marriage (1973).