Vita Sackville-West

British poet, novelist, and world-renowned horticulturist, gifted and complex. Sackville, a member of the famed Bloomsbury group, wrote more than 50 books of poetry, short stories, and novels. She would later write a weekly gardening column for The Observer. Upon her death, her son Nigel Nicolson released her diary, "Portrait of a Marriage" to the public which outlined her lesbian love affair with Violet Keppel Trefusis, her married school chum. The triangle relationship between Sackville-Trefusis and Vita's husband, homosexual British former diplomat, Harold Nicholson, raised many eyebrows in England.

Sackville's mother was the illegitimate daughter of Pepita, a Spanish dancer and "Old" Lionel Sackville-West, a British diplomat posted in Washington DC. Her mother was raised in a Paris convent. She married Lionel Sackville-West and they raised their daughter Vita at Knole. She was the descendent of an aristocratic family whose Gothic manor house, Knole, in Kent, England was a gift from Elizabeth I. Sackville lived in the splendid home with 365 rooms and set within a vast deer park. At the age of 12, Vita had already started writing poetry and short stories. In 1905, she went to Miss Wolff's School in London for three years. In the autumn of 1909, Vita and her mother visited Russia. Vita made her debut into society in June 1910. After her marriage to British diplomat Harold Nicholson, the two lived abroad in Constantinople. She missed England and hated the expatriate life; she returned to Kent while her husband continued his diplomatic service.

Sackville-West published her first poem, "The Land" in 1926. She went on to publish short stories and novels such as "The Edwardians" in 1930 and "All Passion Spent" in 1931. Her husband returned to England and resigned his diplomatic post in 1929. He worked as a journalist, critic and biographer of Swinburne and George V.