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.
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
Leisure and Society Rumer Godden
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 Arnold Bennett
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.
34
Rebecca West gave it an excellent review.
Literary responses E. B. C. Jones
Mansfield further praised its distinction of style. Rebecca West found in it a sense of character that can be brilliant or touching. Her slightly acerbic account of characters and their milieu—the tone of...
Literary responses Laura Riding
Rebecca West 's review of the original edition was the means of bringing the two writers back into contact in 1974.
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
432
The reprint was welcomed by Harry Mathews in the New York Review of...
Literary responses Laura Riding
Among many personal replies was one from Naomi Mitchison , who visited Riding to argue that women are not innately inside but have been made so by being kept out of public activities, that politics...
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/.
Richard Denis Charques in the Times Literary Supplement...
Literary responses Catherine Carswell
Reaction to this book was fiercely negative among traditional Burnsites, especially in Scotland. CC received threats to her well-being, including one letter signed Holy Willy (after a character satirised by Burns) and containing a...
Literary responses Christina Stead
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 Catherine Carswell
Reviews were mixed. Rebecca West , reviewing the book before the libel charges, felt that CC overdid her loyalty to Lawrence.
Pilditch, Jan. Catherine Carswell. A Biography. John Donald, 2007.
142
Virginia Woolf , having at first thought the book interesting, changed her mind...
Literary responses Violet Hunt
VH 's associate Rebecca West had strong praise for Their Lives. In a review in the Daily News on 7 March 1917, she called it a work of art. She found in it a...
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, 2009.
356
It was well-received—as an economical, witty, and ironic exploration of a significant ethical subject—by...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.