Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962), was a British poet, novelist, and garden designer. Born at Knole Park, a 365-room ancestral home, her writing career was launched with the publication of Poems of East and West (1917).

She’s known for her private life and as a master gardener perhaps as much as her literature. She was bisexual and concurrent with her happy marriage with Harold Nicolson (also bisexual) had many affairs with women. It’s believed that she was the inspiration for the title character of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando.

Vita was part of the literary Bloomsbury circle, which included Woolf and her husband, Leonard, as well as E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, and others.

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