Volume 31, Number 5 · March 29, 1984
The Bloom Is Off
By Eleanor Perenyi
Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West
by Victoria Glendinning
Knopf, 436 pp., $17.95
Harold Nicolson: A Biography Vol. I, 1886–1929 Vol. II, 1930–1968
by James Lees-Milne
Chatto and Windus (London)/Shoe String Press, Vol. II: 403 pp., £15.00; $25.00
A new, full-length life of Vita Sackville-West? Two hefty volumes about Harold Nicolson? We live in an age of biographical overkill. The cottage industry based on Bloomsbury and its dependencies is proof enough of that. But surely the curiosity of readers interested in the Nicolsons has been amply satisfied in their son Nigel's Portrait of a Marriage, Harold's own Diaries & Letters (three volumes), not to speak of countless references to them in other books, notably Quentin Bell's life of Virginia Woolf and the Woolf letters and diaries.
Review, 6103 words
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