A GIFT BETWEEN VITA SACKVILLE-WEST'S PARENTS: VICTORIA SACKVILLE-WEST'S ELABORATELY BOUND COPY OF TUDOR AND STUART LOVE SONGS, 1902, WITH SACKVILLE-WEST'S BOOKPLATE AND A PRESENTATION INSCRIPTION FROM HER HUSBAND, THE 3RD BARON SACKVILLE

(SACKVILLE-WEST, Victoria) BRISCOE, J. Potter, editor. Tudor and Stuart Love Songs. London: Gay and Bird, 1902. Octavo, original teal morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and covers, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

First edition of this collection of early British love poetry, printed by the Chiswick Press and beautifully bound in Art Nouveau morocco-gilt. The copy of Victoria Sackville-West with a Christmas presentation inscription from her husband, Lionel Sackville-West, the 3rd Baron Sackville, and with Victoria Sackville-West's own bookplate.

This wonderful large-paper Chiswick Press collection of Stuart and Tudor love songs contains verse by Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Johnson, Christopher Marlow, Shakespeare, and many other contemporary authors. The frontispiece and title page are by Jas Alan Duncan, a prominent Scottish illustrator. This book is inscribed from "Victoria from Lionel XMAS 1902" and bears Victoria Sackville-West's bookplate. Best known as the parents of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's longtime lover, the Sackville-Wests had a scandalous love story of their own. Victoria Sackville-West was the illegitimate daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, the 2nd Baron Sackville. While illegitimacy cast a great stain on her reputation, Victoria was able to secure the affections of her first cousin, Lionel Sackville-West later the 3rd Baron Sackville (the two Lionels were known as Young Lionel and Old Lionel for differentiation purposes). While Victoria may have felt great affection for Lionel, her advantageous marriage also secured permanent access to her father's home, Knole. In an era in which women could not own or inherit property, Victoria's calculated decision to marry Younger Lionel, the direct inheritor of Knole, proved wise. Victoria's love for Knole carried on to her daughter, who once "itemised her three great loves as her husband, poetry and Knole… she insisted that Knole was the greatest of the three. 'God knows I gave you all my love,' she wrote in her diary in an unpublished poem addressed to the house" (The Telegraph). Knole, it bears noting, was the largest private house in Britain, a Tudor estate known to have 365 rooms (one for every day of the year) and at least 50 staircases; Virginia Woolf captured it for the ages in Orlando in passages so vibrant they drove Vita Sackville-West to tears.

Faint foxing to endpapers, toning to extremities (including top two inches) of binding, gilt bright and lovely. A near-fine copy with interesting provenance.