Virginia Woolf and Vita SackvilleWest: Love Letters (Vintage Classics)

With an original introduction by Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and creator of the Bechdel Test.I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.In 1922, the relatively unknown writer Virginia Woolf met the popular author, aristocratand notorious SapphistVita SackvilleWest. Virginia didnt think much of Vitas conversation, but she did think very highly of her legs. In her diary she wrote: But could I ever know her? It was to be the start of nearly 20 years of correspondence, flirtation, literary inspiration, and deep friendship. Virginia would write her most playful novel, Orlando, for and about Vita, and their close bond would end only with Virginias tragic death in 1941.Here is the true love story of Virginia Woolf and Vita SackvilleWest, told through selected letters and diary entries, allowing us to hear these womens complex and constantly changing feelings for each other in their own words. Passionate, witty, and lyrical, their writing gives us a vivid sense of their extraordinary lives: from Vitas travels across the globe with her foreign diplomat husband, to Virginias gossip about parties with the Bloomsbury set; from their shared love of dogs and gardens, to their grief and fear as war breaks out across Europe.These letters bring to life a relationship thateven a hundred years laterfeels radical, relatable, and vital.