Book description
Two women, both destined to be revered as saints; but how very
different in character, opinions and life-stylethey were is lucidly
conveyed in this exceptional double biography, long accepted as a
classic of its kind. The eagle is Saint Teresa of Avila, the national
saint of Spain, a woman of beauty, breeding and culture to whom the very
idea of becoming a nun was at first repugnant. Yet become a nun she did
- not only a nun, but one of the most energetic and resourceful
reformers of the demoralized SpanishChurch in the fanatical age of the
Inquisition.
The dove is Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the most gently remarkable of
saints, a young French bourgeois who spent her life in total obscurity
as a nun and died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. After her
death, the publication of L’Histoire d’une âme
turned the Little Flower of Lisieux into a world-wide cult.
‘A brilliant and sensitive piece of writing’ V. S. Pritchett
The Hon. Lady Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West, was an English poet,
novelist and gardener. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic
life, her strong marriage to Harold Nicolson, her passionate
relationships with women and her gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent.
Sackville-West's long narrative poem, The Land
, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927, and her Collected Poems
won the prize again in 1933. Her best-known novels are The Edwardians
(1930) and All Passion Spent
(1931). Both titles were reissued alongside her earlier novel, Challenge
(1923), by Virago in Spring 2011.
In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services
to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in the Observer
called In your Garden. In 1948 she became a founder member of the
National Trust's garden committee.
Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust and the garden
Vita Sackville-West created there is open to the public. It is one of
the most visited gardens in England.
