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 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
Evelyn Waugh
Rebecca West
, reviewing this novel at its first appearance, extolled the character of Grimes as one of the world's great rogues.
Stovel, Bruce, and Bruce Stovel. “The Genesis of Evelyn Waugh’s Comic Vision. Waugh, Captain Grimes, and <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Decline and Fall</span>”;. Jane Austen and Company: Collected Essays, edited by Nora Foster Stovel and Nora Foster Stovel, University of Alberta Press, pp. 181-0.
181
Critic Bruce Stovel
has pointed out that, extraordinarily, neither West nor any...
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
Evelyn Waugh
During his later life reviewers and commentators were hard on Waugh, and he responded pugnaciously. When Nancy Spain
wrote rudely about him after a hostile encounter in June 1955, he sued for libel and was...
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
Christabel Pankhurst
This inflammatory book, probably CP
's best known work, was championed by the Church of England
(even though the Church disagreed with her views on votes for women). A review by Rebecca West
in the...
Literary responses
May Sinclair
A nurse who had worked with, but did not belong to, the Motor Field Ambulance Corps
disagreed strongly with MS
's version of some of the events described. After an initial exchange of letters she...
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
Emmeline Pankhurst
Rebecca West
described her style as a speaker: Trembling like a reed, she lifted up her hoarse, sweet voice on the platform, but the reed was of steel and it was tremendous.
Greer, Germaine, and Emmeline Pankhurst. “Foreword”. Freedom or death, Guardian News and Media.
5
Literary responses
May Sinclair
The subject-matter of this novel brought it a notice in the Psychoanalytic Review. Rebecca West
, in another review, complained about a doctor (Jerrold's brother) being introduced to explain the actions of other characters...
Literary responses
Mollie Panter-Downes
On the publication of London War NotesNoël Coward
wrote to tell MPD
that her evocation of the city in wartime, nearly thirty years in the past, was so well done that he felt sodden...
After a short spell as an apprentice pharmacist, he embarked on a lengthy career in theatre. He is best remembered today as a dramatist, producing such now-canonical titles as Peer Gynt (in his earlier, poetic...
