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Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson is the 1973 biography of writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West compiled by her son Nigel Nicolson from her journals and letters.
The book relates to Sackville-West's complicated marriage to writer and politician Harold Nicolson. Two chapters are written by Sackville-West. They are centred on herself and her passion for Violet Trefusis for whom she abandoned Harold Nicolson, Vita's bisexual husband and her two children, Nigel and Ben.
Three chapters were written by her son Nigel Nicolson. They present the sexual and emotional life secrets of his mother: "I did not know Violet. I met her only twice, and by then she had become a galleon, no longer the pinnace of her youth, and I did not recognize in her sails the high wind which had swept my mother away […]. I did not know that Vita could love like this, had loved like this, because she would not speak of it to her son. Now that I know everything I love her more, as my father did, because she was tempted, because she was weak. She was a rebel, she was Julian [Vita’s alter ego], and though she did not know it, she fought for more than Violet. She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything. Yes, she may have been mad, as she later said, but it was a magnificent folly. She may have been cruel, but it was a cruelty on a heroic scale. How can I despise the violence of such passion?"
Sackville-West writes mostly about herself and her emotions. Nicolson writes about his father and the love between him and Vita, that grew more and more important for them as their life progressed, and was the base to which each of them returned after Vita's strong passions for other people, including the famous Virginia Woolf and Harold's adventures with men. Nicolson stresses the liberal nature of Vita's and Harold's views and actions about marriage and sexuality in the early years of the 20th century, but also brings forward Vita's intense snobbery and coldness about the lower social classes.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH, usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.
Sir Harold George Nicolson was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West.
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, at Sissinghurst in the Weald of Kent in England, was created by Vita Sackville-West, poet and writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. It is among the most famous gardens in England and is designated Grade I on Historic England's register of historic parks and gardens. It was bought by Sackville-West in 1930, and over the next thirty years, working with, and later succeeded by, a series of notable head gardeners, she and Nicolson transformed a farmstead of "squalor and slovenly disorder" into one of the world's most influential gardens. Following Sackville-West's death in 1962, the estate was donated to the National Trust. It was ranked 42nd on the list of the Trust's most-visited sites in the 2021–2022 season, with over 150,000 visitors.
Dorothy Violet Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington, styled Lady Gerald Wellesley between 1914 and 1943, was an English author, poet, literary editor and socialite.
Violet Trefusis was an English socialite and author. She is chiefly remembered for her lengthy affair with the writer Vita Sackville-West that both women continued after their respective marriages. It was featured in novels by both parties; in Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography; and in many letters and memoirs of the period roughly from 1912 to 1922. She may have been the inspiration for aspects of the character Lady Montdore in Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate and of Muriel in Harold Acton's The Soul's Gymnasium (1982).
Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. Inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend, it is arguably one of her most popular novels; Orlando is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.
Nicolson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Nicholas". There are alternate spellings. Notable people with the surname include:
A love letter is an expression of love in written form. However delivered, the letter may be anything from a short and simple message of love to a lengthy explanation and description of feelings.
Nigel Nicolson was an English writer, publisher and politician.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991.
Evelyn Graham Irons was a Scottish journalist, the first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre.
Clare Consuelo Sheridan was an English sculptor, journalist and writer, known primarily for creating busts for famous sitters and keeping travel diaries. She was a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, with whom she had enjoyed an amicable relationship, though her support for the October Revolution in 1917 caused them to break ranks politically. She enjoyed travelling around the world; and among her circle of friends were Princess Margaret of Sweden, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Lady Diana Cooper, Vita Sackville-West and Vivien Leigh.
Victoria Glendinning is a British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is an honorary vice-president of English PEN and vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature. She won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread Prize for biography.
All Passion Spent is a literary fiction novel by Vita Sackville-West. Published in 1931, it is one of Sackville-West's most popular works and has been adapted for television by the BBC. The novel addresses people's, especially women's, control of their lives, a subject about which Sackville-West was greatly concerned although often pointing out that she did not consider herself a feminist. The title is taken from the final three words of John Milton's Samson Agonistes.
Alvilde Lees-Milne was a British gardening and landscape expert.
The Edwardians (1930) is one of Vita Sackville-West's later novels and a clear critique of the Edwardian aristocratic society as well as a reflection of her own childhood experiences. It belongs to the genre of the Bildungsroman and describes the development of the main character Sebastian within his social world, in this case the aristocracy of the early 20th century.
“I ... try to remember the smell of the bus that used to meet one at the station in 1908. The rumble of its rubberless tyres. The impression of waste and extravagance which assailed one the moment one entered the doors of the house. The crowds of servants; people’s names in little slits on their bedroom doors; sleepy maids waiting about after dinner in the passages. I find that these things are a great deal more vivid to me than many things which have occurred since, but will they convey anything whatever to anyone else? Still I peg on, and hope one day to see it all under the imprint of the Hogarth Press, in stacks in the bookshops.”
Portrait of a Marriage is a British television miniseries detailing the real-life love affair between Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel, as well as the strength of Vita's enduring marriage to the diplomat Harold Nicolson. Based on the biography of the same name by Nigel Nicolson, it features Janet McTeer as Vita, and Cathryn Harrison as Violet.
The Bloomsbury Group plays a prominent role in the LGBT history of its day.
