The glamorous writer Vita Sackville-West was 10 years younger than Woolf and came from an aristocratic family. While Virginia Woolf’s earlier novels, which included Night and Day (1919), Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), were not hugely commercially or critically successful during her time, she is today respected as one of the most important writers of the 20th century and a pioneer of “stream of consciousness” writing. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a politically active left-wing writer and university friend of her brother’s. Her sister Vanessa was an artist, and when they reached adulthood, the two sisters became the heart of an influential intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of radical artists, writers and thinkers during the early 20th century. Who were Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West?īorn in London in 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen, or “Ginia” as she was affectionately known, had a love for arts and literature running through her family. Here’s the true story behind Vita & Virginia, Woolf and Sackville-West’s passionate relationship and the great literary work it inspired. Starring Elizabeth Debicki as Woolf and Gemma Arterton as Sackville-West, the film from director Chanya Button is set against the backdrop of bohemian high society in 1920s London with a host of characters based on real-life people. That relationship is the subject of a new film, Vita & Virginia, which includes lines lifted straight from the literary duo’s love letters.