Woolf’s illness, however, does not stop Vita Sackville-West from courting her with letters of admiration. Vita has a soft spot for Virginia’s writing – and being a Sapphist, she admits having one for Virginia herself. Vita’s letters and poems compel Virginia into a courtship that is hardly concealed from their respective husbands. Soon, Virginia is enthralled by Vita. She is everything Virginia is not – extroverted, direct, in possession of a strongly magnetic personality and, as Virginia writes, ‘amazing legs’.

Vita adventures into the far reaches of the Middle East and begins sending a series of love letters to Virginia, richly detailing her adventures and inspiring Woolf’s masterpiece Orlando.  The novel chronicles the adventures of an androgynous hero who inhabits multiple lifetimes as both a man and a woman – a thinly veiled expression of Virginia’s own romantic awakening for Vita. Upon Vita’s return, the two women consummate their relationship – a major step for the sexually timid Woolf. Although she enjoys spells of contentedness through the next decade and a half of their turbulent relationship, Virginia eventually takes her own life in the River Ouse.

Virginia and Vita’s bond continues to live on in Woolf’s canonical literature, which enjoys even more popularity today than in her lifetime. Vita and Virginia is a timeless story, told in an exciting contemporary style, about two women who smashed through social barriers to find solace in forbidden connection.