Document Type
Finding Aids
Publication Date
2018
Collection Date
1947-1961
Identifier
SACKVILLE-WEST.1
Description
The collection contains 27 letters and 4 greeting cards of personal correspondence written between 1947-1961, from V. Sackville-West at her home at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, U.K., to Grace Mountcastle Martin in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Many of the letters convey the author's thanks for shipments of sugar and soap during times of rationing in the U.K.
V. [Victoria or "Vita"] Sackville-West, English poet, novelist, socialite and suffragette, was born in 1892 at her family's estate at Knole in Kent. Privately educated, she began writing poetry at age 11, and had produced 8 novels and 5 plays by the time of her marriage to Harold Nicholson in 1913. Sackville-West eventually published nearly 50 volumes of poetry, fiction, biography, history and horticulture. She was awarded the Hawthorne Prize in 1927 for her poem, "The Land." Sackville-West was noted among her peers for her active, bohemian lifestyle and her numerous affairs with other women, particularly the author Virgina Woolf, but despite this latter relationship she was never directly involved with the Bloomsbury group of artists and writers. She and her husband settled at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, where she became a recognized authority on gardening and country life. She died in 1962.
Recommended Citation
Collection of Victoria Sackville-West Materials, Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine.
Included in
Horticulture Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Poetry Commons