To the Lighthouse ... had been published on 5 May 1927. Vita Sackville West, returning from Persia, found a copy awaiting her. Virginia had promised she would have a new book ready for her. It was inscribed: Vita from Virginia (In my opinion the best novel I have ever written). Vita was a little surprised at such shameless immodesty, but that night when she opened the book to read it in bed, she found that the inscribed copy was a dummy....
Clive Bell, back in London, wrote to Vanessa in May that the town seemed particularly dull and sad. 'Only Virginia is sublimely happy, as well she may be — her book is a masterpiece.' The view was pretty generally held by the critics, and a great many people wrote enthusiastically, although one complained that her descriptions of the fauna and flora of the Hebrides were totally inaccurate. The book sold better than its predecessors — 3,873 copies (two of which were purchased by the Seafarers' Educational Society) in the first year.
From Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf. A Biography, ii (1972), 127, 129.