Challenge was published by George H. Doran in the United States in 1924 but was suppressed in England — not by censorship but by family pressure. The novel is transparently based on Sackville-West’s passionate affair with Violet Trefusis between 1918 and 1921: an elopement, a flight to France, the intervention of husbands, the agonized ending.
In the novel, the affair is transposed to a Greek island setting: Julian (Vita) leads a revolution for independence while pursuing a consuming romance with Eve (Violet). The heterosexual disguise (Julian is male) does not conceal the autobiographical basis — everyone in Bloomsbury and aristocratic society recognized the characters — and it was this recognition that prompted the suppression. Vita’s mother, Lady Sackville, threatened legal action if the novel appeared in England.
The novel remained unavailable in Britain until 1974 (published posthumously by Collins). As fiction it is uneven — the political plot is less convincing than the emotional one — but as autobiography it is invaluable: the most direct record of the passion that nearly destroyed Vita’s marriage to Harold Nicolson and that would be transmuted, in very different form, into Woolf’s Orlando.
Collecting Challenge
First edition (George H. Doran, New York, 1924): Cloth with dust jacket. US-only edition.
Market values:
- US first edition, fine/fine: $200–$600
- Very good: $75–$200
- UK first (Collins, 1974): $30–$75
- Suppressed edition — bibliographically significant