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.
PF
's cousin Diana Raymond
published, with a preface, in a limited edition from Tragara Press
of Edinburgh, Frankau's parody A Letter from R*b*cc* W*st.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
She went on to Alassio in Italy. Next time she visited the south of France she went as the guest of Rebecca West
.
Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson.
143, 189
Like most people of her class and period,...
Literary responses
Pamela Frankau
PF
's new agent had accomplished the whole process of selling this book before he had time to read it. He then reminded her that she had her forebears (grandmother and father) to beat; that...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Pamela Frankau
In this book PF
offers her impressions of celebrities
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery.
119
met through her great-aunt Eliza Aria
. Place is important too, like her vivid yet dreamlike description of Sligachan on the Isle of Skye...
Literary responses
Pamela Frankau
After her death an ordinary . . . housewife wrote to Diana Raymond, calling herself representative of all those who had found especial magic in PF
's writing.
Raymond, Diana, and Pamela Frankau. “Introduction”. The Winged Horse, Virago, p. v - xiii.
v
Rebecca West
wrote regretfully in an...
Literary responses
Ford Madox Ford
While some critics found The Good Soldierlong-winded, unpleasant, and lacking in focus,
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
In 1939, EF
became a member of the executive committee of the PEN Club
. She remained on the committee for ten years, during which its chief work was helping with the escape and establishment...
Literary responses
Eleanor Farjeon
This was the first of EF
's books to meet with success, and it set the course for her professional life. A favourable review by Rebecca West
was crucial in its early reception, and Farjeon's...
Publishing
Daphne Du Maurier
She wrote this novel during the previous winter at her parents' country house, Ferryside at Bodinnick in Cornwall.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
While she worked at it, some lines from an Emily Brontë
poem (Self-Interrogation) came...
Textual Features
Daphne Du Maurier
The working title had been The Return of the Soldier; this, however was also the name of a book by Rebecca West
published during World War I.
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. M. Delafield
The diary abounds with references to contemporary literature, including several internal allusions to Time and Tide. The Provincial Lady engages in friendly rivalry over its competitions for readers and describes social encounters with the...