Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West. Matthew Dennison
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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 (roses)

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Source ISBN: 9780007486960

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007486977

Version: 2015-05-20

Dedication

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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

PROLOGUE: Heritage

PART I: The Edwardians

PART II: Challenge