Books, Arts & Manners: An Edwardian Life

Vita: A Biography of Vita Sackville-West, by Victoria Glendinning (Knopf, 480 pp., $17.95)

Victoria Glendinning is an experienced biographer. She has written lives of Edith Sitwėll and Elizabeth Bowen and is now writing a biography of Rebecca West, which suggests her enduring interest in the lives of female intellectuals and artists. In Vita she had a difficult task, because her subject was a difficult (and unpleasant) woman, despite the fact that she had extraordinary opportunities for an exceptionally pleasant and interesting life. Her self-indulgence, instead of extending, actually reduced the radius of her enjoyment and perhaps even of her imagination. Such was the paradox of her personality. Her biographer faithfully records the unfolding of Vita’s life, including her creative activities and her emotional and sexual indulgences; yet Victoria Glendinning does not emphasize this paradox. Perhaps she would not agree that it is a paradox at all.

JL

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John Lukacs

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Vita: A Biography of Vita Sackville-West, by Victoria Glendinning (Knopf, 480 pp., $17.95)

Victoria Glendinning is an experienced biographer. She has written lives of Edith Sitwėll and Elizabeth Bowen and is now writing a biography of Rebecca West, which suggests her enduring interest in the lives of female intellectuals and artists. In Vita she had a difficult task, because her subject was a difficult (and unpleasant) woman, despite the fact that she had extraordinary opportunities for an exceptionally pleasant and interesting life. Her self-indulgence, instead of extending, actually reduced the radius of her enjoyment and perhaps even of her imagination. Such was the paradox of her personality. Her biographer faithfully records the unfolding of Vita’s life, including her creative activities and her emotional and sexual indulgences; yet Victoria Glendinning does not emphasize this paradox. Perhaps she would not agree that it is a paradox at all.