The Edwardians was published by the Hogarth Press (Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s press) in 1930 and became a major bestseller — selling 30,000 copies in its first six months. The novel is a barely-disguised portrait of Knole, the Sackville family’s extraordinary Elizabethan house in Kent, and the aristocratic life Sackville-West knew from childhood.
Sebastian, the young Duke of Donet, inherits his ancestral estate (called “Donat” in the novel, but unmistakably Knole in every detail) and is expected to continue the rituals of Edwardian aristocratic life: the country-house weekends with their elaborate etiquette and discreet adultery, the London season, the ceremonial functions of rank. Sebastian revolts — not through political radicalism but through honesty, refusing to maintain the hypocrisies that the system requires.
The novel is valuable both as fiction and as social history: Sackville-West describes Edwardian upper-class life from the inside with comprehensive knowledge and a critical eye that never becomes contemptuous. She understood the beauty of the life she depicted — the houses, the gardens, the rituals — while recognizing its moral hollowness. The portrait of a society that maintains itself through lies about sex, money, and class remains sharp.
Collecting The Edwardians
First edition (Hogarth Press, London, 1930): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $75–$200
- Hogarth Press imprint adds significant value