Vita Sackville-West (1892 – 1962)

Vita Sackville-West was an English novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a garden designer.

She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels and was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems.

She was the inspiration for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf. Woolf was only one of Vita's many lovers over the years, all well documented in her many letters and journals. Vita and her husband had an open marriage and both had same-sex relationships before and after they were wed, including some lovers within their peers in the Bloomsbury Group.

Vita had a longstanding column in The Observer (1946–1961) and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. They restored the home and gardens over many years, where it remains in the care of the National Trust and provides food and a pleasant garden for the local community.

Books by Vita Sackville-West