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
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.
Described as...
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...
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
Ford Madox Ford
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
Later came John Van Druten
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
and Frankau being always afraid of Rebecca.
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
PF 's affair with Humbert Wolfe
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...