'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,...

A gentleman’s daughter rejects her station in this tale of nineteenth-century love across class boundaries by the acclaimed poet and author of The Edwardians. In the English village of King’s Avon, across the downs from Marlborough, young Clare Warrener lives in the big manor house with her gentleman father. But she is increasingly drawn out to the downs where young Nicholas Lovel spends his days tending sheep. Though Nicholas is handsome and capable, his family is the subject of suspicion around town. Few have been inside the cottage where his mother is housebound, and his brother Olver is known to be simple.   When their love is thwarted by lies and deception, Clare accepts an unwelcome proposal from a much older man, and Nicholas is forced into a marriage that will protect his family. But still, the love and freedom they found on the downs beckons them both to return.   Vita Sackville-West is celebrated for her...

The Second World War has been won. Germany has conquered Britain and all of Europe, and now only America stands, protected for now by the Pacific Charter – a precarious promise of peace from the Reich. Lester Dale and Helen Temple, two strangers united by their memories of a lost England, are staying in the Grand Canyon Hotel in Arizona amongst a variety of displaced Europeans and naive American youths. When the fragile peace eventually shatters, only Lester and Helen can take charge, and lead their fellow guests into an uncertain future. Filled with extraordinary characters and strange twists, Grand Canyon, written during World War Two, is Vita Sackville-West's unflinching exploration of what might be, and a warning of the dangers of compromise when world peace is at stake.

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 ebook edition presents the story for the first time since 1924. Lovers of literature and history will rejoice in this irresistible one-of-a-kind ebook.

From 1946 to 1957, Vita Sackville-West, the British poet, bestselling author of All Passion Spent and maker of Sissinghurst, wrote a weekly column in the Observer depicting her life at Sissinghurst, showing her to be one of the most visionary horticulturalists of the twentieth-century. With wonderful additions by Sarah Raven, a famous British gardener in her own right who is married to Vita's grandson Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst draws on this extraordinary archive, revealing Vita's most loved flowers, as well as offering practical advice for gardeners. Often funny and completely accessibly written with color and originality, it also describes details of the trials and tribulations of crafting a place of beauty and elegance.Sissinghurst has gone on to become one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world and this marvellous book, illustrated with drawings and original photographs throughout, shows us how it was created and how gardeners...

Aristocrat, novelist, essayist, traveler, and lover of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West lived a fascinating and daring life on the periphery of the Bloomsbury circle. She wrote in an astounding variety of genres, including travel narrative, historical and literary studies, poetry, fiction, and essays, and is probably best known or her novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, and incomparable writings about English country houses and gardens. Here, for the first time, is an anthology that represents the full expanse of her interests and styles. Over half of the works, including intimate diaries and a dream notebook, have never been published. Edited by a foremost expert on the Bloomsbury circle, Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings provides the best and most accessible introduction to this unique writer.

The strange story of Joan of Arc, the obscure peasant girl who became the national saint of France, is retold in this celebrated, classic biography. Saint Joan lives for the reader on every page, as a shepherd girl in a remote part of fifteenth-century rural France, visited by visions of saints and angels; as the avenging virgin who regenerated the soul of a torn and wretched France and led her troops to victory; and as a condemned heretic and witch, burned at the stake and, five hundred years later, canonised as a saint.

As a nineteen-year-old heir to a vast country estate, Sebastian is a regular at the extravagant parties thrown by his mother. Constrained by his responsibilities as a part of the upper class, yet without the courage to strike a different path for himself, Sebastian embarks on a series of socially acceptable but unsatisfying love affairs. But when offered the change for an alternative life by explorer Leonard Anquetil, Sebastian must choose between the comfortable, dutiful life he has always know and one filled with adventure and the unknown. Offering a glimpse of aristocratic life just before King George V' s coronation, The Edwardians reveals the hidden delights of aristocratic society that ultimately led to its demise. Originally published in 1930, The Edwardians is one of Vita Sackville-West' s later novels. As the only child of the 3rd Baron Sackville, Sackville-West understood the obligations and restrictions of the upper class, and The...

'One never gets enough love.' A novel by the acclaimed author, poet and gardener which recounts the ill-fated relationship of Evelyn Jarrold, a 39-year-old fashionable upper middle class widow and 25-year-old Miles Vane-Merrick, a socially aware aristocrat. While they are passionately in love they both have powerful and contrasting domineering personalities. They make each other happy and unhappy, she beadily aware of the unconventional age gap and lacking confidence in Miles's world. Miles has many interests including his love for Evelyn, his estate, his politics, his interesting friends. He is set to become a successful, popular politician. A wonderful evocation of the complexity of 1930s high-society mores and values, Family History is a universal love story.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIET NICOLSONVita 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.

The two saints whose lives Vita Sackville-West contrasts in this double biography were recorded by very different epithets: 'the great' and 'the little'. Both women were Carmelites, both canonised and both shared the same name. But whilst Teresa of Avila was aristocratic, intellectual, vigorous and humorous, a Spanish woman of the sixteenth century, Thérèse of Lisieux was a guileless and sentimental figure of the French bourgeoisie. Teresa, the great mystic, is the patron saint of Spain; Thérèse, the humble nun, is probably the most beloved saint in the entire Calendar. The extraordinary rise of the cult of both women is scrutinised.

Vita Sackville-West's brilliant first novel, published in 1919, at the height of her stormy affair with Violet Trefusis, is acclaimed as a masterpiece. The story of Ruth Pennistan, on the one hand a conventional farmer's daughter, born and brought up in Kent, on the other a mysterious gypsy figure, trapped against her will in a drama of love and tragedy. A heroine who mirrored the passions and contradictions of Vita's own life and character. 'Alive with smouldering passion and passages of real beauty . . . unquestionably a novel of unusual power' Daily Telegraph

'He found himself in such a position that he no longer dared to remove his spectacles at all; he could not face a return to the daylight mood; realism was no longer for him.' First published in 1924 and 1922 respectively, these exquisitely written novellas confirm Vita Sackville-West's gifts as both stylist and observer of her very particular world. Seducers in Ecuador, an amusing and ironic tale of the nature of truth and fantasy, is the story of Arthur Lomax, every bit the English gentleman in his white ducks and solar topee, enjoying the pleasures of an Egyptian cruise. But with the addition of a pair of blue spectacles to the outfit, Lomax's entire world changes – to alarming, deadly effect. Peregrine Chase, the subject of The Heir, is on first acquaintance a less colourful figure, the manager of a Wolverhampton insurance company. But when he inherits a moated Tudor house called Blackboys his...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOANNA LUMLEYWhen 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.