Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West

Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West
Matthew Dennison

Matthew Dennison creates a revealing portrait of the brave and charismatic Vita, in the first biography of her to be written for thirty years.Vita Sackville-West was a woman who defied categorisation. She was the dispossessed girl whose lonely childhood at Knole inspired enduring feats of imagination, the celebrated author and poet, the adored and affectionate wife whose marriage included passionate homosexual affairs (most famously with Virginia Woolf ), and the recluse who found in nature and her garden at Sissinghurst Castle solace from the contradictions of her extraordinary life. In this dazzling new biography, Matthew Dennison traces these complexities, depicting a prolific, radical, sensitive and uncompromising figure in all her depth.

Copyright (#ulink_7fcaa93b-4791-51f9-9227-e3a86151e9e2)

William Collins

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WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2014

Copyright © Matthew Dennison 2014

Matthew Dennison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Front cover shows Lady with a Red Hat (oil on canvas), Strang, William (1859–1921) / Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, Scotland © Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums) / Bridgeman Images; Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) (roses)

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Source ISBN: 9780007486960

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007486977

Version: 2015-05-20

Dedication (#ulink_58de820c-98b3-5df2-8138-d4292c1c21fb)

For Gráinne, with all love

‘… he told her that he could find no words to praise her; yet instantly bethought him how she was like the spring and green grass and rushing waters.’

(Orlando, Virginia Woolf)

‘All the coherence of her life belonged to Condaford; she had a passion for the place … After all she had been born there … Every Condaford beast, bird and tree, even the flowers she was plucking, were a part of her, just as were the simple folk around her in their thatched cottages, and the Early-English church, where she attended without belief to speak of, and the grey Condaford dawns which she seldom saw, the moonlit, owl-haunted nights, the long sunlight over the stubble, and the scents and sounds and feel of the air.’

John Galsworthy, Maid in Waiting (1931)

‘… we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.’

Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

CONTENTS

COVER (#u22a35f3d-da2a-5131-b91d-867c44764fb9)

TITLE PAGE (#ue8ec78de-679b-5494-b9d8-bf9509a9ef11)

COPYRIGHT (#u331f527d-15f1-5288-8fea-b49d58b16cda)

DEDICATION (#u813c7152-fbb8-5395-aaf6-33fca6fa7323)

EPIGRAPH (#ud8f67e09-1677-5d23-a13e-0beb147bf1e2)

FAMILY TREE (#ud8eed981-dcd3-5cfc-8f56-e23f3f266b78)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#u3c633c17-b26c-594e-bb8f-0fba0c8f9423)

PREFACE (#u05439be1-32eb-53db-832e-a11f5a8c4c6b)

PROLOGUE: Heritage (#u6f56f4eb-1fe4-59da-9419-91f461b8f0c1)

PART I: The Edwardians (#u71a108bc-5550-59e3-b053-89fc2a8f85a6)

PART II: Challenge (#u1b9abed0-6983-50c7-a905-6827a8266529)

PART III: Invitation to Cast Out Care (#litres_trial_promo)

PART IV: Orlando (#litres_trial_promo)

PART V: The Land and the Garden (#litres_trial_promo)

PART VI: All Passion Spent? (#litres_trial_promo)

PICTURE SECTION (#litres_trial_promo)

NOTES (#litres_trial_promo)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

BY THE SAME AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

List of Illustrations (#ulink_1787a380-7656-5a87-805f-ae90ee7c96ce)

1 (#litres_trial_promo). Vita by Philip Alexius de László, oil on canvas, 1910 (© National Trust Images/John Hammond)