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.
With books hard to come by, RG
read and re-read those she had, often sent her by relatives and often new publications. She called Austenexactly what I need and likened herself to Emma.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan, 1987.
207
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
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.
qtd. in
Booth-Clibborn, Edward, and Nina Hamnett. “Introduction”. Laughing Torso, Virago, 1984, p. v - x.
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.
qtd. in
Bagnold, Enid, and Laurian Jones. National Velvet. W. Heinemann, 1935.
back cover
qtd. in
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
76
Rebecca West
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.
qtd. in
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
167
She feared being relegated to the category of...
Literary responses
Jan Morris
She was honoured in Wales by election in 1993 to the Gorsedd or supposedly throned assembly of bards (taking the bardic name of Jan Trefan) and by the award in 2016 of the medal...
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...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
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
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.
qtd. in
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
By 1930, AB
was feeling frustrated at the critical and editorial reactions to his work, the attention focussed exclusively on only four among almost twenty times that many titles: The Old Wives' Tale, The...
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...
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
F. Tennyson Jesse
FTJ
later described it as a very bad book. The only excuse I had was that . . . I had to make a living, and Secret Bread, the other book, would take me...
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.
