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Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 9 October 1927: 'I am reading Knole and The Sackvilles. Dear me; you know a lot: you have a rich dusky attic of a mind.'
Saturday 12 February 1927: 'Vita's prose is too fluent. I've been reading it, & it makes my pen run. When I've read a classic, I am curbed & -- not castrated; no, the opposite; I cant think of the word at the moment. 'Had I been writing P[assenger] to T[eheran] I should have run off whole pools of this coloured water; & then (I think) found my own method of attack [...] Were I writing travels I should wait till some angle emerged: & go for that. The method of writing smooth narrative cant be right; things dont happen in one's mind like that. But she is very skilful & golden voiced.'
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written: 'Reading this August: Souvenirs de Tocqueville Any number of biographies -- Coleridge -- one or two poems. Lord Kilbracken memoirs. Shaw Pen portraits. Ainslie memoirs. Vita's novel [...] Nothing much good -- except de T: Coleridges letters; but failed to finish the 2nd vol.'