Devil at Westease - 1947

Devil at Westease by V. Sackville-West. 1947 Doubleday, first edition, 219 pages. Rebecca Dinerstein Knight in The Paris Review starts a wonderful biographical essay on Sackville-West thusly: "How preposterous is it that Vita Sackville-West, the best-selling bisexual baroness who wrote over thirty-five books that made an ingenious mockery of twenties societal norms, should be remembered today merely as a smoocher of Virginia Woolf? The reductive canonization of her affair with Woolf has elbowed out a more luxurious, strange story: Vita loved several women with exceptional ardor; simultaneously adored her also-bisexual husband, Harold; ultimately came to prefer the company of flora over fauna of any gender; and committed herself to a life of prolific creation (written and planted) that redefined passion itself." Devil at Westease is perhaps Sackville-West's rarest novel and wasn't published in Britain at the time. According to a New York Times review "This new book by V. Sackville-West, poet, novelist, biographer, writer on travel and sundry other subjects, is a whodunit, complete with murder, police, unofficial detective and a romance. It is, as might be expected, very well-bred, with sustained suspense, a subtle and original turn of plot, and a fine literary flavor, qualities with which mysteries are not too often blessed." Condition: Jacket in VG condition, some wear and small chips, book in VG condition, some rubbing away to boards, tanning to end papers, square and clean.