Вита Сэквилл-Уэст

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 pass...

A portrait of fashionable society at the height of an era, The Edwardians reveals, through the lives of its characters, all that was glamorous about the period—and all that was to lead to its downfall. Sebastian and Viola are children of the English aristocracy. Handsome and moody, 19-year-old Sebastian is heir to Chevron, a vast country estate. Tying him to his inheritance is a deep sense of trad...

Vita Sackville-West is known as much for her creation of the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle as for her numerous novels, poems and gardening articles. Written in 1926, The Land is a nostalgic celebration of the Kentish countryside through the seasons. It won the Hawthornden Prize and sold over 100,000 copies.

Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on a Fleet Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger. Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands and h...

After they met in 1922, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf began a passionate relationship that lasted until Woolf's death in 1941. Their revealing correspondence leaves no aspect of their lives untouched. This volume, which features over 500 letters spanning 19 years, includes the writings of both of these literary icons.

When Lady Slane was young, she nurtured a secret, burning ambition: to become an artist. She became, instead, the dutiful wife of a great statesman, and mother to six children. In her widowhood she finally defies her family. Her children, all over sixty, have planned for her to spend her remaining days quietly, as a paying guest of each of them in turn. Much to their dismay, Lady Slane rents a sma...