Who is Vita Sackville-West as noted in the book, After Sappho?

Vita Sackville-West is an English writer who appears throughout the second half of After Sappho. In 1920, Vita writes Portrait of a Marriage as an explanation of the unusual dynamic between she and her husband; Vita maintains romantic relationships with women, while her husband is married to another man. She later meets Virginia Woolf, to whom she admits that “I admire you terribly” (195). Vita and Virginia begin a romantic affair, which lasts for many years. The women create Hogarth Press in order to publish their own work, as well as the work of other progressive writers. When Virginia begins arguing for a new form of biography, she asks Vita if she might write a work inspired by Vita and her family’s life. Vita tells Virginia that she could have “every crevice of her, every shadow and string of pearlescent thought” (238). Virginia eventually publishes Orlando, a fictionalized biography of Vita and her family.