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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Vita Sackville-West

  

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Vita Sackville-West : Seducers in Ecuador

'I like the story very very much - in fact, I began reading it after you left...went out for a walk, thinking of it all the time, and came back and finished it, being full of a particular kind of interest which I daresay has something to do with its being the sort of thing I should like to write myself.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Manuscript: Unknown

  

Vita Sackville-West : Passenger to Teheran

'The whole book is full of nooks and corners which I enjoy exploring. Sometimes one wants a candle in one's hand though - That's my only criticism - you've left (I daresay in haste) one or two dangling dim places....'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Manuscript: Sheet, Earlier in the letter Virginia Woolf describes the form of the text she read as 'the second batch of proofs'.

  

Vita Sackville-West : On the Lake

Monday 21 December 1925: 'I read her [Vita Sackville-West's] poem; which is more compact, better seen & felt than anything yet of hers.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      

  

Vita Sackville-West : Collected Poems

'And the book came. And I've read one or two of the new ones. And I liked them yes - I liked the one to Enid Bagnold; and I think I see how you may develop differently.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      

  

Vita Sackville-West : Country Notes

'I've not read it (and I dont suppose you'd care a damn to know what I thought, if I thought about it considered as a work of art - or would you?) - but I dipped in and read about Saulieu and the fair and the green glass bottle....I shall keep it by my bed, and when I wake in the night - so, I shant use it as a soporific, but as a sedative: a dose of sanity and sheep dog in this scratching, clawing, and colding universe....'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Vita Sackville-West : Heritage

'I read Celery through from cover to cover last night in bed. It really is good.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson      Print: Book

  

Vita Sackville-West : Grey Wethers

' "I have been reading Grey Wethers," said the Marquis- "a magnificent book. The descriptions of the downs are as fine as any in the language. Such power! Such power! Not a pleasant book of course! But what English!" '

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Curzon      Print: Book

  

Vita Sackville-West : The Land

'He sat down on the floor beside me, and helped me to look up "droil". "What's this?" he said, taking up my proofs. I simpered. He took them out into the garden, spread a rug very carefully on the grass, and began to read. I fled upstairs and packed. After an hour I re-appeared. The Laureate was still reading.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Bridges      Manuscript: Sheet, Proofs

  

Vita Sackville-West : The Land

'Darling, do you know what I did last night after writing to you? I meant to finish my lecture, but fell to reading the Georgics (mine, not Virgil's), and really I thought they were rather good.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      

  

Vita Sackville-West : Passenger to Teheran

'(I read it through at a sitting - but that of course is not a good test...)

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson      Print: Book

  

Vita Sackville-West : Passenger to Teheran

'I let Colonel Haworth read a bit of it. "By God!" he said, "this is the first book I've read on Persia which gives one the slightest idea what it's like." '

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Haworth      

  

Vita Sackville-West : The Land

'Dearest - you don't know what "The Land" means to me! I read it incessantly - it has become a real wide undertone to my life.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson      

  

Vita Sackville-West : Solitude

'I had time yesterday to read your poem. In fact I read it three times. Once in the train. Once after luncheon in the library. And once before I went to bed.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson      

  

Vita Sackville-West : The Land

'On the flyleaf of her novel she quoted from V. Sackville-West's pastoral poem, "The Land", a verse which testified to her abiding sense of the Yorkshire that made her.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby      Print: Unknown

  

Vita Sackville-West : Bees on the Land

'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair

1. Minutes of last read & approved.

5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in Music and Literature.”

6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]

7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”

8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic, Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson, he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]

9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.

10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.

11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”

12. Katherine Evans read from Victoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.

13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the remainder of the reading off.

14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine S. Evans      

  

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