Violet Trefusis: An Intimate Biography of Her Scandalous Love Affair with Vita Sackville-West and Their Enduring Bond

A remarkable woman in her own right and a highly gifted writer, Violet Trefusis is especially remembered for her scandalous affair with Vita Sackville-West, first disclosed in Portrait of a Marriage. After their abortive flight from their husbands in 1920, Vita returned to England and her writing, and Violet became an expatriate, immersing herself in international society and the world of art. This intriguing biography traces her life from a romantic childhood-when her mother, Alice Keppel, was the mistress of King Edward VII-to her death in Florence in 1972. A supplement of correspondence between Violet and Vita Sackville-West provides further insights into their relationship. The letters from Violet reveal, as nowhere else in her writing, the depth of her feelings for Vita. Those from Vita, written years later, attest that their love for one another never really ended.

Philippe Jullian (1921-1977) was a French illustrator, art historian, biographer, aesthete, novelist and dandy.

Born in Bordeaux in 1922, he studied Literature at university but left to pursue drawing and painting. In his later years, he resided in England but regularly spent winters in Africa. He also travelled extensively in India and Egypt. Jullian committed suicide in 1977.

A collector, he published his autobiography, La Brocante, which detailed the "love of small objects," in 1975.

One of his first officially noted works was the first "artist's" label for the famous wine from Château Mouton Rothschild in 1945, in memory for the World War II victory over Germany.

Jullian's book illustrations (for works by Honoré de Balzac, Colette, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ronald Firbank, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, among others, as well as for his own books) are witty, ornate, and often grotesque. His books and articles on Art Nouveau, Symbolism, and other art movements of the fin-de-siècle helped bring about a revival of interest in the period. These include the biography Robert de Montesquiou (1965; Prince of Aesthetes, 1967), Esthétes et Magiciens (1969; Dreamers of Decadence, 1971), Les Symbolistes (The Symbolists, 1973), and The Triumph of Art Nouveau (1974). Among others, he admired French painter Antonio de La Gandara. Works of fiction by Jullian, who was homosexual, also dealt with the decadent, sensual, and macabre with themes of homoeroticism, sado-masochism, transvestism and the aesthetic life. His gift for satire is evident both in his fiction (including La Fuite en Egypte [1968; The Flight into Egypt, 1970]) and in such works of social satire as Dictionnaire du Snobisme (The Snob-Spotter’s Guide, 1958), Les Collectioneurs (The Collectors, 1967), and most notably his collaboration with the British novelist Angus Wilson, For Whom the Cloche Tolls: A Scrap-Book of the Twenties (1953), which he also illustrated. Other books include Montmartre (1977) and Les Orientalistes (The Orientalists, 1977), works of art history; and biographies of Edward VII (1962), Wilde (1967), Gabriele D’Annunzio (1971), Jean Lorrain (1974), Violet Trefusis (1976), and Sarah Bernhardt.

John Phillips is a contributor for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt titles including: "Violet Trefusis".