Rebecca West

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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
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
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 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 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...
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...
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
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
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.
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 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 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...
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.
207
Leisure and Society Violet Hunt
VH also involved herself with the short-lived journal, Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex (1914-15).
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
212
Lewis, Wyndham, editor. Blast. Klaus Reprint Corporation.
prelims
She suggests in her memoir that she secured Rebecca West 's short story Indissoluble Matrimony for the journal's first issue.

Timeline

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Texts

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