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Portrait of a Marriage - Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (Paperback, Univ of Chicago PR ed.) Loot Price: R519
Discovery Miles 5 190
You Save: R63 (11%)

Portrait of a Marriage - Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (Paperback, Univ of Chicago PR ed.)

Nigel Nicolson

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List price R582 Loot Price R519 Discovery Miles 5 190 You Save R63 (11%)

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One cannot underestimate or overlook the tasteful, sometimes elegant, romantic and wayward elements which are variously and signally a part of this memoir of Nigel Nicolson's parents - the gifted and prominent V. (Vita) Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. And even where one might attempt to avert one's eyes from Shakespeare's "greatest scandal waits on greatest state," one cannot dismiss it out of hand particularly since Vita's imperious mother was involved in the most notorious trial of Edwardian society. But the primary story here - one third of which was written in Vita's hand and left locked in a Gladstone bag, two thirds of which consists of her son's amplification thereof - deals with her love for another woman, Violet. This was prefaced by a girlhood affair with the duller Rosamund and followed by a more discreet friendship with Virginia Woolf who modeled Orlando on Vita - that "most charming love letter in literature." The liaison with Violet (which included a period when Vita appeared as "Julian" both in fact and in the novels she wrote) lasted some three years and is filled with a turbulent urgency on both sides, ending with a scene - closer to French comedy than tragedy - when both husbands came to reclaim their wives. None of this will or did diminish the fact that the Nicolsons achieved a marriage of great mutuality and serene permanence for 49 years in spite of "her muddles" and "his fun" - they were both homosexual from the start. Indeed before she married him, Vita spoke of Harold as "unalterable, perennial and best" just as he proved to be. Nicolson's book is then much more than this episode - in recording it Vita said "I swore I would shirk nothing" and her mother called it "quite like a sensational novel" - as he retraces, revises and illumines the family history throughout. Vita also said that this story "assumed an audience" - surely it will now be affirmed. (Kirkus Reviews)
Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in "Orlando," The story of Sackville-West's marriage to Harold Nicolson is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In "Portrait of a Marriage," their son Nigel combines his mother's memoir with his own explanations and what he learned from their many letters. Even during her various love affairs with women, Vita maintained a loving marriage with Harold. "Portrait of a Marriage" presents an often misunderstood but always fascinating couple.
""Portrait of a Marriage" is as close to a cry from the heart as anybody writing in English in our time has come, and it is a cry that, once heard, is not likely ever to be forgotten. . . . Unexpected and astonishing."--Brendan Gill, "New Yorker"
"The charm of this book lies in the elegance of its narration, the taste with which their son has managed to convey the real, enduring quality of his parents' love for each other."--Doris Grumbach, "New Republic"

General

Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of origin: United States
Release date: November 1998
First published: November 1998
Authors: Nigel Nicolson
Dimensions: 229 x 135 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 249
Edition: Univ of Chicago PR ed.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-58357-0
Categories: Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > General
Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General
Books > Biography > General
LSN: 0-226-58357-0
Barcode: 9780226583570

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