Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Rebecca West
-
Standard Name: West, Rebecca
Birth Name: Cicily Isabel Fairfield
Nickname: Cissie
Nickname: Anne
Nickname: Panther
Nickname: Rac
Pseudonym: Rebecca West
Married Name: Cicily Isabel Andrews
Used Form: R*b*cc* W*st
Rebecca West
rose to fame early (before the First World War) through her witty, acerbic journalism. In addition to numerous essays and reviews, she wrote about a dozen novels, short stories, political analyses, a classic travel book, and works of literary criticism. Her journalism remains an important commentary on the contemporary women's movement, offering both strong intellectual support and trenchant satire. She is known for her pungency of phrase; on occasion she was more eager for a phrase to strike shockingly home than for it to withstand criticism.
VH
greatly admired West
, and used their interaction as a spring board from which she delved into issues about women and writing. In 1926, for instance, she compared West physically and intellectually to George Sand
Leisure and Society
Violet Hunt
VH
also involved herself with the short-lived journal, Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex (1914-15).
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
212
Lewis, Wyndham, editor. Blast. Klaus Reprint Corporation.
prelims
She suggests in her memoir that she secured Rebecca West
's short story Indissoluble Matrimony for the journal's first issue.
Leisure and Society
Violet Hunt
VH
chose to dress in bold colours prominent in the Vorticist aesthetic, and commissioned Wyndham Lewis
, one of the movement's leaders, to create an abstract decoration for one of her rooms. West
described the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
marked several points of decline in her relationship with Ford
. She told Rebecca West
that Ford was somewhat repelled
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
220
by her after he learned in 1914 that she had syphilis. She also...
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
251
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
VH
's associate Rebecca West
had strong praise for Their Lives. In a review in the Daily News on 7 March 1917, she called it a work of art. She found in it a...
Textual Production
Susan Hill
The anthology of British women writers she published in 1990 with Michael Joseph
as The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories was reprinted the following year as The Penguin Book of Modern...
Literary responses
Nina Hamnett
Rebecca West
was not charmed: her review likened NH
to a character in Evelyn Waugh
's Vile Bodies and commented on the book's idiot gusto curiously combined with a strong suicidal impulse.
qtd. in
Booth-Clibborn, Edward, and Nina Hamnett. “Introduction”. Laughing Torso, Virago, 1984, p. v - x.
Despite her peripatetic wartime existence HD took over, by June 1916, Richard Aldington
's position as co-editor of The Egoist while he was serving in the British Army. (He had succeeded in this position to...
Leisure and Society
Rumer Godden
With books hard to come by, RG
read and re-read those she had, often sent her by relatives and often new publications. She called Austenexactly what I need and likened herself to Emma.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan, 1987.
207
Violence
Mary Gawthorpe
This description comes from Cicily Fairfield (the future Rebecca West)
, who was observing the election campaign. West also said that stewards commonly used great physical violence, and she attributed Gawthorpe's health breakdown directly to...
Literary responses
Mary Gawthorpe
She took it in good part when Teresa Billington
told her when one of her most headlong and disorganized speeches (given after taking a doctor's prescription for exhaustion) was pretty bad,
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
234
and set...
Textual Production
Pamela Frankau
PF
's novel The Devil We Know was published; the character Jennifer Nash is an unflattering portrait of Rebecca West
.
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.
138-9
Publishing
Pamela Frankau
PF
's cousin Diana Raymond
published, with a preface, in a limited edition from Tragara Press
of Edinburgh, Frankau's parody A Letter from R*b*cc* W*st.
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