Sackville-West, V
Entry updated 3 June 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1892-1962) UK author, married to Harold Nicolson and renowned for her creation of the garden at Sissinghurst, Kent; she was christened Victoria, but was almost always called Vita, to avoid confusion with her mother, also Victoria. A member of the Bloomsbury Group and a model for the title character of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), she was best known for non-genre novels like The Edwardians (1930). Some of her work was fantasy, such as "An Unborn Visitant" (Christmas Number 1932 Graphic Magazine), or The Dark Island (1934), set on the imaginary Island of Storn in the English Channel which features haunted trees cut into arrays of chthonic topiary. In Grand Canyon (1942), a Scientific Romance of some interest, a victorious Germany, having won World War Two in Europe, bombs New York from the air, an act which cows America into compliance (see Hitler Wins). But after an unnecessary Nazi assault upon the Grand Canyon Hotel, the tale turns Equipoisally into Posthumous Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], with the "survivors" of the raid embarking upon the kind of fantasticated quest for reality and resolution typical of that form. [JC]
Victoria Mary Sackville-West
born Knole, Kent: 9 March 1892
died Sissinghurst, Kent: 2 June 1962
works (highly selected)
- The Dark Island (London: The Hogarth Press, 1934) [hb/Ben Nicholson]
- Grand Canyon (London: Michael Joseph, 1942) [hb/]
nonfiction
- Aphra Behn: The Incomparable Astrea (London: Gerald Howe, 1927) [nonfiction: Aphra Behn: hb/]
links
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Posthumous Fantasy
- Picture Gallery
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