On the 19 th of December, Vita noted her feelings towards Virginia, ‘I’ve rarely taken such a fancy to anyone…I have quite lost my heart’. On the 15 th of December 1922, Virginia noted in her diary how she regarded Vita with disdain, for whilst she had ‘all the supple ease of aristocracy’, she had ‘not the wit of the artist’. It all began when Vita and Virginia first met at a rather dire dinner party in 1922, with Vita already a famous writer whilst Virginia, one of the Bloomsbury set, was just becoming recognised for her work. From flirtation and humour, to philosophical ponderings over the war, class, and feminism, the letters never fail to amuse, to dazzle, and to intrigue. We learn about Woolf’s recurring bouts of illness, her writing of Mrs Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and Vita’s travels, for her husband Harold Nicholson was a diplomat and posted in Teheran from 1925 to 1927. In February 2021 Penguin published an edition of Vita and Virginia’s letters, which traverse almost twenty years and offer an enlightening and deeply immersive look into the lives, loves, and literary works of the two authors. Woolf was, of course, referring to her friend and lover, the acclaimed writer, aristocrat – and sapphist- Vita Sackville-West. ‘I am glad that our love has weathered so well’, renowned modernist writer Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary in October 1940.
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