Those familiar with
Virginia Woolf's book
OOrlando may know the inspiration behind the sex-changing protagonist:
Vita Sackville-West.
Vita Sackville-West was a famous writer, writing for novels, poems, several famous letters and diary entries and even a column for The Observer. However, she's most remembered for her relationships and for being Virginia Woolf's muse.
She had written a miniture book for Queen Mary’s dolls’ house. A known exhibit at Windsor Castle, the doll house is a work of art. It was built for Queen Mary by Sir
Edwin Lutyens, who is known for designing most of our national capital. Many leading designers and craftsmen of the time contributed to this dollhouse which had electricity, running hot and cold water and thousands of objects made to the scale of 1:12.
Of course this masterpiece would be incomplete without a library. The Library boasts 200 tiny tomes, including handwritten books by authors Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Vita Sackville-West had also contributed a tiny book called
A Note of Explanation. This previously unpublished work of hers has been published recently in a lovely cloth bound cover by Chronicle Books.
The book tells the story of the spirit who haunts the doll house in 1924. This spirit seems to have been a part of several important literary events like Cinderella’s ball and Sleeping Beauty’s kiss and has arrived in the doll house as 1920's flapper.
There are striking similarities between this and
Orlando, though it was written before Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West ever met. This could be because both are inspired but the same person- Vita.
The original
A Note of Explanation was handwritten and measures 39 x 10mm. The new edition is more practically sized for people larger than dolls, measuring 250 x 175mm. It includes illustrations by Kate Baylay and an afterword by Matthew Dennison, Vita Sackville-West’s biographer.
