Land, The.
Inscribed to Evelyn Irons
At The Start Of Their Affair
Sackville-West, Vita. The Land. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1929.
8vo.; endpapers lightly offset; light foxing throughout; red cloth; printed spine label; light wear. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition, seventh printing of Sackville-West’s Hawthornden Prize-winning poem, first published in 1926 with woodcuts by George Planck eliminated in later reprintings. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper to Evelyn Irons, Evelyn / from / Vita. / March 1931.
The Land incorporates some of Sackville-West’s poems of life in Kent from Orchard and Vineyard, and others completed in Persia on a visit to Harold. Vita’s first thought for The Land came from J. C. Squire in 1921: Harold wrote in his diary, “Vita has an idea of writing sort of English Georgics. Inspired by a chance remark of J.C. Squire’s to the effect that it was odd how people did not write poems about occupations” (quoted in Glendinning, p. 119). (After its publication, Squire would give it “its first and adulatory review” [ibid. p. 167].) For the next five years she worked on this collection. Half way through, she wrote to British civil servant, translator, and patron of poets and artists Edward Marsh that she liked a phrase of his about the “short lyric cries” of modern poets, “which exactly expresses the irritation that is driving me into trying the experiment of a volume of connected verse” (ibid. p. 134) Forty years later, Nigel reminisced “I can see her now at her sitting-room table at Long Barn writing The Land, looking up over her spectacles as we burst in, patient with our interruption, but closing the blotter on the manuscript…” (Harold Nicolson Diary and Letters 1930-1939 p. 30).
Poet Laureate Robert Bridges lavished praise on The Land: “It’s very good. I’m very pleased—very pleased indeed—you’ve got your feet on the ground—nothing woolly there—not a woman’s writing at all—damn good—I congratulate you” (Vita and Harold, p.148). Sir Edmond Gosse did the same: “A poem of which neither Tennyson nor Wordsworth need have been ashamed. The truly Virgilian solidity … This most important contribution to English Literature….” (ibid., pp. 166-7). Vita was inspired by critical response to begin a sequel, “The Garden,” which she would eventually complete over a decade later. Meanwhile, she mused, “My head is bursting with poetry. I will write another long poem. I will get myself into English literature. Somehow or other” (quoted in Glendinning, p. 167).
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