The passion of art—and life This was Vita Sackville-West’s second novel, the superbly romantic story of a young, Byronic Englishman and the woman he loves. Together they travel to Greece, where they become central figures in a political revolution, an idyll of love, and a drama of jealousy and betrayal. The scene is richly described, the action is exciting, the romance is captured brilliantly and with intense feeling. Yet this novel was suppressed—for it told the truth. Challenge mirrors with passionate sincerity the events surrounding Vita Sackville-West’s illicit love affair with Violet Keppel, the childhood friend for whose sake she was prepared to outrage convention by abandoning her husband Harold Nicolson, her family, and all that England meant to her. Available at last in this Avon edition, Challenge is a timeless declaration of love and a moving expression of the rebelliousness of the soul.
Author
Novels of British writer Victoria Mary Sackville-West, known as Vita, include The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931). This prolific English author, poet, and memoirist in the early 20th century lived not so privately. While married to the diplomat Harold Nicolson, she conducted a series of scandalous amorous liaisons with many women, including the brilliant Virginia Woolf. They had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships. Her exuberant aristocratic life was one of inordinate privilege and way ahead of her time. She frequently traveled to Europe in the company of one or the other of her lovers and often dressed as a man to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. Gardening, like writing, was a passion Vita cherished with the certainty of a vocation: she wrote books on the topic and constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, one of England's most beautiful gardens at her home. She published her first book Poems of East and West in 1917. She followed this with a novel, Heritage, in 1919. A second novel, The Heir (1922), dealt with her feelings about her family. Her next book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), covered her family history. The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. In 1948 she was appointed a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. She continued to develop her garden at Sissinghurst Castle and for many years wrote a weekly gardening column for The Observer. In 1955 she was awarded the gold Veitch medal of the Royal Horticultural Society. In her last decade she published a further biography, Daughter of France (1959) and a final novel, No Signposts in the Sea (1961). She died of cancer on June 2, 1962.
