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.
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...
Literary responses
Elizabeth von Arnim
This novel elicited a wide range of responses from reviewers. John Middleton Murry
consoled EA
when she received harsh criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He told her there was no way to protect...
Literary responses
Katherine Mansfield
After Mansfield's death, Woolf
wrote in her diary: it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it.
Gunn, Kirsty. “How the Laundry Basket Squeaked”. London Review of Books, Vol.
35
, No. 7, pp. 25-6.
25
KM
appears in episodes in more than one novel by her friend...
Literary responses
Ethel M. Dell
The implications of homosexual paedophilia (whose existence Dell was almost certainly unaware of) caused merriment rather than scandal. Rebecca West
published in the New Statesman a few years later an article entitled The Posh Horse...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
The enthusiastic review by J. C. Squire
was not entirely welcome to VSW
, since she regarded Squire as a silly old ass and all that.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
167
She feared being relegated to the category of...
Literary responses
Elizabeth von Arnim
Rebecca West
wrote in the New Statesman that in this novel EA
had lapsed back into the unplumbed seas of artificial femininity.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
197
Despite unenthusiastic reviews, the novel quickly became a bestseller and was a...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
As a manifesto for modernism, Jacob's Room divided the critics. T. S. Eliot
wrote in a letter that VW
had now succeeded in freeing her original gift from compromise with the traditional novel.
In her review, Rebecca West
wrote that she found the work marred by an almost demented cosmopolitanism. It gives the impression that England is entirely inhabited by Roumanians with French mistresses, and Baltic barons.
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen.
230
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.
VSW
received personal congratulations on her stories from Sir Edmund Gosse
and John Galsworthy
. Among reviewers the only unfavourable voice was that of Rebecca West
. S. P. B. Mais
in the Daily Express...
Literary responses
Storm Jameson
Margaret B. McDowell
wrote that while Jameson's first novels sold well, they served a greater importance as her apprentice writing. They garnered increasingly positive reviews as she began to mature as a writer. Rebecca West
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
The novel was well received. In the AthenæumKatherine Mansfield
congratulated EB
for creating a pioneer who sees, feels, thinks, hears, and yet is herself full of the sap of life.
Bagnold, Enid, and Laurian Jones. National Velvet. W. Heinemann.
back cover
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
76
Rebecca West
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Orlando set a new level in VW
's public reputation. The usual polarization of reviews was represented by J. C. Squire
in The Observer calling it a very pleasant trifle that would entertain the drawing-rooms...
Literary responses
Doreen Wallace
Response was gratifying. The Times Literary Supplement, apparently categorizing DW
as a regional novelist, said that she describes the countryside and country people with accuracy and feeling, yet she does not sentimentalize or overstress...
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
EB
's biographer Anne Sebba
notes that although Serena Blandish is offensive to contemporary readers, it was in its own time received as no more than a bitter comedy of manners, blithely caputuring the wicked...
