vookdealers

Writing Room in the Tower at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, England

where the personal books of Vita Sackville-West are stored

- October 21, 1911

- The diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913

“She read voraciously – especially biographies – Josephine Bonaparte, Lady Emma Hamilton, Marie Antoinette, and Eleonora Duse – bold women who invented themselves, seized control of their image; women whose personalities defined the age they lived in and glittered out from the past. “She was fascinated,” said Amy (Greene), “by women who had made it.” Sometimes Amy found her sitting on the stairs, gazing at a portrait of Lady Hamilton, a coal miner’s daughter who launched herself into the highest echelon of 18th-century society. Then she discovered Josephine and scooped up every book she could find about her, chattering at dinner about the empress and her friends. She regaled them with stories about Juliette Recamier, a brainy beauty who comissioned a nude statue of herself. When Juliette’s breasts began to age she smashed the girlish marble ones – controlling her image just like Marilyn.“