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.
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
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...
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...
Literary responses
Elizabeth von Arnim
Her first publication also initiated a taste for gardening books with a hands-on approach to natural landscaping: Gertrude Jekyll
published the first of her many gardening books, Wood and Garden, in 1899, and included...
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...
Textual Features
Una Troubridge
UT
wrote much of her 1914 diary in Italian. After 1915, her diaries document her relationship with Radclyffe Hall
, touching on the two women's health, families, travels, and social activities. She also writes about...
Travel
Violet Trefusis
In late 1927, Violet travelled with the same party through the United States. They had tea at the White House
and saw Rebecca West
while in Washington, DC.
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton.
69-70
Friends, Associates
Violet Trefusis
Around the same period she began friendships with, among others, Edith
, Osbert
, and Sacheverell Sitwell
, Rebecca West
, and Nancy Cunard
. She writes in her memoir of the scintilliating Sitwell triumverate...
Friends, Associates
G. B. Stern
GBS
moved in literary and artistic circles in London before the first World War. She visited Rebecca West
at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in September 1917 during a week of air-raids.
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall.
268ff
Several decades later she...
Intertextuality and Influence
G. B. Stern
GBS
followed it with another dog novel, The Ugly Dachshund, in 1938 (illustrations by K. F. Barker
). After this came Dogs in an Omnibus, 1942 (again illustrated by the aptly-named Barker), which...
GBS
opens the second Austen book with an amusing account of an interview with a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old niece who relates how she has fallen seriously in love with a dashing army officer who is her ideal...
Literary responses
Christina Stead
British and American reviewers liked the modernist eccentricity of these stories. Reviews in Australia, however, tended to dismiss them on grounds of a failure in realism.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer (the same who had hailed Stead the short-story writer as an impressive new talent) ranked her novel far lower. Even though he found here curiosity, wit, delight in words, and...
Literary responses
Muriel Spark
The book went into a third reprinting within two months. It was on the short-list for the first Booker Prize.
Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark. The Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
356
It was well-received—as an economical, witty, and ironic exploration of a significant ethical subject—by...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
West, Rebecca. The Court and the Castle. Yale University Press, 1957.
West, Rebecca. The Fountain Overflows. Macmillan, 1957.
West, Rebecca. “The Gospel According to Mrs. Humphrey Ward”. The Freewoman.
West, Rebecca. The Harsh Voice. Jonathan Cape, 1935.
West, Rebecca. The Judge. Hutchinson.
West, Rebecca. The Meaning of Treason. Viking.
West, Rebecca. The Meaning of Treason. Pan Books, 1956.
West, Rebecca, and David Low. The Modern "Rake’s Progress". Hutchinson, 1934, http://UofA.
West, Rebecca. The New Meaning of Treason. Viking Press, 1964.
West, Rebecca. The Only Poet and Short Stories. Editor Till, Antonia, Virago, 1992.
West, Rebecca. The Return of the Soldier. Nisbet, 1918.
West, Rebecca. The Sentinel. Editor Laing, Kathryn, Legenda, 2002.
West, Rebecca. The Strange Necessity. Jonathan Cape.
West, Rebecca. The Thinking Reed. Hutchinson.
West, Rebecca. The Young Rebecca. Editor Marcus, Jane, Macmillan with Virago, 1982, http://UofA.
West, Rebecca. This Real Night. Macmillan, 1984.
West, Rebecca. War Nurse. Cosmopolitan Book Corporation.