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.
Connections
Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Cultural formation | Dora Marsden | This constant mobility did not preclude DM
from forming loving relationships with several women at this time, however, apart from the constant support provided by her mother
. Rona Robinson
, a close friend from... |
death | Catharine Amy Dawson Scott | Tributes to the founder of PEN
poured in from writers and friends such as Louis Golding
, Rebecca West
, and Karel Capek
. Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth, 1987. 203-5 |
Education | Kate Clanchy | While in EdinburghKC
attended George Watson's College
, where she was acutely conscious of feeling like an outsider owing to her lack of interest in sports and her bookishness and posh accent. Jinks, Peter. “Muse turns tables”. Scotland on Sunday. Scott, Jane. “By Virtue Of An Explosive Arts Debut”. The Herald. |
Family and Intimate relationships | Violet Hunt | |
Family and Intimate relationships | Fay Weldon | During her marriage she and Edgar entertained the literary and avant-garde world: she later regaled her grand-daughter with irreverent stories of Joseph Conrad
, Jean Rhys
(Such a louche young woman), Weldon, Fay. Auto da Fay. Flamingo, 2002. 102 |
Family and Intimate relationships | H. G. Wells | Wells wrote about characters who defied conventional morality. In his own life, he married twice, and had a busy extramarital sexual career. He writes about this himself in the second volume of his autobiography (published... |
Family and Intimate relationships | Elizabeth von Arnim | EA
and H. G. Wells
were lovers, though the relationship was strained: Jane Wells
did not intend to divorce her husband, and it was during this time that he became involved with Rebecca West
as... |
Family and Intimate relationships | Cecily Mackworth | CM
later wrote that the search for love was interwoven with many events of her life; she felt her judgement was poor in matters of the heart, and connected this with the loss of her... |
Family and Intimate relationships | Charlotte Mew | There has been much speculation, both at the time and more recently, about the nature of the relationship between the two writers. CM
seems to have fallen in love, but Sinclair was not receptive, not... |
Family and Intimate relationships | Dora Marsden | Jardine became Marsden's assistant and for a number of years the two lived together (sometimes with Hannah Marsden
) in London, Southport, and Blackburn. In her Time and Tide piece on Marsden... |
Friends, Associates | Pamela Frankau | Her aunt Eliza Aria
introduced the very young PF
to many of her older, god-like friends: first of all actress Sybil Thorndike
and writers Michael Arlen
and Osbert Sitwell
. Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson, 1935. 133-4 |
Friends, Associates | Mary Webb | In London, despite the shyness that made literary life difficult for her, MW
became friends with May Sinclair
, Robert
and Sylvia Lynd
, Rebecca West
, novelist and critic Edwin Pugh
, and Lady Cynthia Asquith |
Friends, Associates | Pamela Frankau | PF
's friendship with Rebecca West
began with West seeing her as a protégée worthy of her time and energy, Frankau, Pamela. “Preface”. A Letter from R*b*cc* W*st, edited by Diana Raymond, Privately printed at the Tragara Press, 1986, pp. 3 - 5. 3 Frankau, Pamela. “Preface”. A Letter from R*b*cc* W*st, edited by Diana Raymond, Privately printed at the Tragara Press, 1986, pp. 3 - 5. 3 |
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, 1990. 251 |
Friends, Associates | Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda | MHVR
's friends included novelist Elizabeth Robins
, Theodora Bosanquet
(spokesperson for British Federation of University Women
and one-time secretary of Henry James
), MP Ellen Wilkinson
(despite of their different stance on party politics)... |
Timeline
23 November 1911
Dora Marsden
and Mary Gawthorpe
edited the first issue of The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, a paper about sexual reform.
15 April 1912
The Daily Herald, first newspaper of the Labour Party
, was launched on capital of £200; it changed its title to the Herald and back again to the Daily Herald before expiring in 1964.
2 July 1914
The first issue of the magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis
, formally announced the arrival of Vorticism, an avant-garde movement in art.
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
14 May 1920
Time and Tide began publication, offering a feminist approach to literature, politics, and the arts: Naomi Mitchison
called it the first avowedly feminist literary journal with any class, in some ways ahead of its time.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.
168
21 February 1924
The first issue appeared of the New Yorkermagazine (still going strong in the twenty-first century).
Borne Back Daily.
21 February 2011
1925
Christine Murrell
and Letitia Fairfield
, in association with the Medical Women's Federation
, set out to explode some damaging myths by launching a survey on menstrual experience among girls.
24 February 1934
The National Council for Civil Liberties
was founded by journalist Ronald Kidd
, who had witnessed the treatment of hunger marchers in London in November 1932.
21-25 June 1935
The First International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture (an anti-fascist event urging the responsibility of writers to their society) was held in Paris.
17 September 1945
The trial began at the Old Bailey in London of Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce), famous as a wartime anti-British, pro-Hitler broadcaster, who before the war had regularly posed as of British nationality.
30 September 1946
The Nuremberg trials ended after almost a year in court, and judges from Allied countries sentenced eleven Nazi
war criminals to death.
1962
Publisher John Calder
and writer's widow Sonia Orwell
together organised at Edinburgh the first, highly successful Writers' Conference.
22 April 1969
The Booker Prize for the year's best novel was awarded for the first time. The winner was P. H. Newby
with Something to Answer For; the judges were chaired by Frank Kermode
, and...