SACKVILLE-WEST, Vita.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Nursery Rhymes. First trade edition, the dedication copy, bound for presentation and inscribed by the author on the dedication page, "for Anna, her private copy, with the author's love. Christmas 1950", with the printed dedication struck through.The recipient, Anna "Mac" Macmillan (d.1962), became Vita's secretary at Sissinghurst in 1936, and her lover in 1938. Their affair began in autumn, when war with Germany seemed inevitable: "the household was issued with gas masks, and a trench dug in the orchard... Vita's response to the tension had been to allow Mac, her Scottish Presbyterian secretary, to fall in love with her" (Glendinning, p. 295). Macmillan left Sissinghurst during the war to become a nurse with the Queen Alexandra Nursing Service; Sackville-West wrote to her almost every day until her return in 1945, and their affair continued intermittently until 1953, when Sackville-West bought Macmillan a house in nearby Deal.

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