SACKVILLE-WEST, Vita.

£17,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

"Sissinghurst", autograph manuscript, A pre-publication manuscript draft by Sackville-West of her poem "Sissinghurst", loosely inserted into a first edition, first impression, of Collected Poems: Volume One, along with a typed letter signed to one Mrs Carey, dated 4 May 1933: "I find that I have not got a typewritten copy of the poem you wanted, so I hope you will forgive me for sending it to you in manuscript. Yours sincerely, V. Sackville West.""Sissinghurst" was composed in 1930 and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1931. It was republished in 1933 in Collected Poems: Volume One (pp. 111-14) and by the Samson Press in a limited edition of 500 copies. This appears to be a draft made prior to its first publication and shows Sackville-West making her final edits. There are four notable differences between this manuscript and the printed poem of 1931, and three lines where Sackville-West's edits to the manuscript are carried over into print.An early line in the manuscript reads "Rise the brick gable and the slender tower". "Slender" is struck through and replaced with "Springing" in pencil; the final poem is printed as "Rise the brick gable and the spring tower". The manuscript "Beneath the Himalayas of the sky" is changed by 1931 to the more general "Beneath the snowy mountains of the sky", and "And fills me with insensate deep repose" is exchanged for the more rhythmically appealing "And fills me with a mindless deep repose".The recipient may have been Clara Ellen Care

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