V. Sackville-West was born into one of the oldest families of England, the Sackvilles, whose ancestral estate, Knole, was a gift to poet and dramatist Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) from his cousin Elizabeth I. Sackville-West's family history is so vivid and complex that she wrote two volumes on the subject, and Knole was for her a living symbol of the continuity of history, an emblem of an ordered world. Yet, at the same time, this British novelist felt herself an alien in the Edwardian aristocracy that was her heritage.

Victoria Mary Sackville-West was born at Knole on 9 March 1892, the only child of Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West and Lionel Sackville-West, who became the third Lord Sackville in 1908 after the death of Lionel Sackville-West, the second Lord Sackville, his uncle and his wife's father. The child was called Vita to distinguish her from her unpredictable and high-spirited mother, a former...