Vita Sackville-West

ELT 47 : 2 2004 recent critical work on Lee by Christa Zorn, Diana Maltz, Kathy Psomiades , Ruth Robbins, and Janet Hotchkiss; other studies will surely follow, addressing the question of value more thoroughly than does this biography . Yet it is "a literary biography," and Colby both produces and borrows some useful ideas for thinking about Lee's work: her interest in the genius loci, her concept of a "culture Ghost," her Protean energies, and her lifelong belief in the moral responsibilities of the artist. In offering us this volume, she has helped to prepare the way for fuller republication of the work, most of which has fallen out of print. Volume by volume, critic by critic, we'll begin to see the lineaments of our era's Vernon Lee take shape. She has been studied principally as a woman writer, a lesbian writer, a World War I writer, and a ghost-story teller, but there are many other possible ways to consider her works. The narrators of her supernatural tales often seek avidly the meaning of painted and engraved portraits; in the process they come to know themselves and the objects of their fascination (who tend to appear as revenants) far better. Here is Colby's interesting portrait of Lee, who has already been "ghosted" by the dominant narratives of modernism. We have both reasons and means to explore further. JESSICA R. FELDMAN --------------------------- University of Virginia Vita Sackville-West Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings. Mary Ann Caws, ed. New York: Palgrave , 2002. xiv+ 370 pp. $29.95 MARY ANN CAWS'S GOAL in compiling this anthology is to introduce Vita Sackville-West to a new generation of scholars. The majority of the selections are brief, as are her annotations, which contextualize as they praise. The selections include excerpts from diaries (not only Sackville-West's, but also her mother's "for what they reveal of another epoch," as Caws explains), from letters, novels, travelogues, from her gardening books and critical writing, and then there is some poetry, three short stories, and a narration of some dreams. As Sackville-West's son, Nigel Nicholson, writes in the preface, this anthology "forms the autobiography [Sackville-West] never wrote." It succeeds in providing numerous verbal snapshots of his mother which, on the whole, form an entertaining collage of insight into an interesting personality. Sackville-West is remembered primarily as a member of the Bloomsbury group, for having served as Virginia Woolf's model for the title character of Orlando, and for her passionate love affairs, especially with 200 BOOK REVIEWS Woolf and Violet Trefusis, writer and companion of Sackville-West's from childhood. Victoria Glendinning's 1983 biography of SackvilleWest and Nigel Nicholson's Portrait of a Marriage (1973; 1980) amply illuminate Sackville-West's life, and this anthology will surely enhance our understanding of a talented writer and keen observer, though we may not feel compelled to read much beyond this present collection. Many of the selections, such as letters, the dream book, and the diaries , will be of interest to those scholars studying Sackville-West's life story. They are not literary gems and are occasionally tedious. The stories and poems are likewise worth minor note. Caws reports that Sackville-West wanted to be most known as a poet, but the selections here will not strengthen her reputation towards that end. The most engaging sample in the anthology, a piece entitled "Autumn" from The Garden (1926), here and there sparkles with crisp imagery, but elsewhere seems overly contrived, not sung, as in the opening lines: "Autumn in felted slipper shuffles on/ Muted yet fiery—Autumn's character./ Brown as a monk yet flaring as a whore/ And in the distance blue as Raphael's robe/Tender around the Virgin." And a reader would need a very keen sense of Sackville-West's humor to appreciate these opening lines from "The Intellectual to His Puppy": Golden lad, what art thou eating? Feathered slipper, silken sock? Filthy muck I call manure? Drop it, drop it, pretty sweeting. That's a trick I can't endure. The most rewarding reading in the anthology, on the other hand, will be found in those selections dealing...