Rebecca West

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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.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Rebecca West looking straight forward, wearing a checked jacket with dark cuffs and collar and white flowers pinned at the neckline. With one hand she touches a chunky metal necklace. Her wavy, greying hair, jaw-length, is pushed behind her ears.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
234
and set...
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.
207
Occupation H. D.
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...
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.
Booth-Clibborn, Edward, and Nina Hamnett. “Introduction”. Laughing Torso, Virago, p. v - x.
v
Alan Clutton-Brock
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...
Friends, Associates Violet Hunt
VH met and was fascinated by Rebecca West , who had recently written a review Hunt called a column of wit and innuendo—as destructive as a prairie fire.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
193-4
Friends, Associates Violet Hunt
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.
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.
220
by her after he learned in 1914 that she had syphilis. She also...
Friends, Associates Violet Hunt
Distraught over her split with Ford , VH was supported by several of her women writer friends, especially Radclyffe Hall , Dorothy Richardson , Ethel Colburn Mayne , May Sinclair , and Rebecca West .
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
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...
Occupation Henrik Ibsen
After a short spell as an apprentice pharmacist, he embarked on a lengthy career in theatre. He is best remembered today as a dramatist, producing such now-canonical titles as Peer Gynt (in his earlier, poetic...
Textual Production Henrik Ibsen
This play was first published in Norwegian in 1886 and translated into English in 1889.
McFarlane, James, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen. Cambridge University Press.
xxv
Florence Farr played Rebecca in the first English staging of play; Rebecca West took her pseudonym from the play's...

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