Lesson 15 No Signpost in the Sea.doc

Lesson Fifteen:
No Signposts in the Sea
___By V. Sackville -west
I. Additional Background Knowledge
1. About the author:
( 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962 )
Victoria Mary Sackville-west was an English poet and novelist. She was born in Knole House, Kent, UK. She was a descendant of Lord Treasurer Thomas Sackville, who is the cousin of Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1913 she married diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886-1968), and they traveled extensively during his years in the foreign office. In London she was a member of the Bloomsbury group of literary and artistic friends including Virginia Woolf. Lytton Strachey, . Foster and others.
In the 1920s Sackville-West became romantically involved with the writer,
Virginia Woolf, who celebrated this love affair in the novel Orlando (1928). Dedicated to Sackville-West, the book traces the history of the youthful, beautiful, and aristocratic Orlando, and explores the themes of sexual ambiguity. This was followed by her novels, The Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931) and The Dark Island (1934).
She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage, and her passionate affair with novelist Virginia Woolf. Sackville-West's first published works were a collection of poems, Powers of West and East (1917). Her long poem The Land won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She also wrote the novel Heritage (1919)
Personal life, marriage and bisexuality
(Bit of profligacy )
In 1913, Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson, and the couple moved to Cospoli, Constantinople(君士但丁堡of Turkey). Nicolson was at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, author of biographies and novels and also bisexual in what would now be called an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had consecutive same-sex relations.(gay, lesbian)
These were no impediment(obstacle) to a true closeness between Sackville-West and Nicolson, as is seen from their nearly daily correspondence (published a