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.
Her literary friends of a generation before her own included George Meredith
, Rhoda Broughton
, and Henry James
. She participated in the friendship of the two last-named by being regularly at Broughton's house...
Friends, Associates
Victoria Cross
Possibly because VC
spent so much time travelling, it is difficult to judge the extent of her social circle. She is unmentioned by many literary autobiographies of the period. Charlotte Mitchell
suggests that she may...
Friends, Associates
Lucille Iremonger
LI
and her husband were correspondents both of Rebecca West
and of controversial Conservative MP Enoch Powell
.
“The Rebecca West Papers”. University of Tulsa: McFarlin Library: Department of Special Collections.
Janus. http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/.
Powell, John Enoch
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
By the time of the move to Tavistock Square, VW
began to socialize more than she had in years. She circulated with Bloomsbury familiars and (re)acquainted herself with Rebecca West
, Rose Macaulay
,...
Friends, Associates
Violet Trefusis
Around the same period she began friendships with, among others, Edith
, Osbert
, and Sacheverell Sitwell
, Rebecca West
, and Nancy Cunard
. She writes in her memoir of the scintilliating Sitwell triumverate...
Friends, Associates
Dora Russell
Sylvia Pankhurst
enrolled her son as a day-boy at Beacon Hill, and lived nearby while writing The Suffragette Movement; Beatrice
and Sidney Webb
, and G. B. Shaw
also visited. The school hosted annual...
Friends, Associates
Storm Jameson
The two women were friends through the 1930s and their relationship became increasingly intimate after the death of Winifred Holtby on 29 September 1935. Brittain stayed with Jameson and Chapman the night after Holtby died...
Friends, Associates
Dora Marsden
Introduced to each other by Mary Gawthorpe
, DM
and Rebecca West
began a friendship based on their shared interest in feminist issues.
Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury.
93
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton.
16-17
Friends, Associates
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
Once settled in a larger house more suited to entertaining, CADS
renewed old friendships and made new ones with luminaries in London literary society, including Beatrice Harraden
, Arthur Waugh
, H. G. Wells
,...
VH
met and was fascinated by Rebecca West
, who had recently written a review Hunt called a column of wit and innuendo—as destructive as a prairie fire.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
193-4
Friends, Associates
May Sinclair
Her articles and critical reviews were encouraging for many writers, including T. S. Eliot
.
Scott, Bonnie Kime. Refiguring Modernism. Indiana University Press.
85
Sinclair also made the acquaintance of other women writers, including Alice Meynell
, Ida Wylie
(a close friend), Rebecca West
