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.
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...
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Dora Marsden
, then the editor, and Rebecca West
launched a much-needed subscription campaign in order to re-establish the journal on sound financial footing after it had run into trouble for publishing allegedly immoral contents....
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
As editor, HSW
attempted to recruit Storm Jameson
for the paper, but Jameson unhappily could not accept a full-time position. She also began to acquaint herself with contributors, such as H. D.
, whom she...
Reception
Harriet Shaw Weaver
In 1932Eliot
dedicated his Selected Essays to HSW
: in gratitude and in recognition of her services to English letters.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
This exemplifies the double-edged nature of MW
's reputation. On the one hand she has become almost synonymous in the public mind with the genre she made famous: the romantic, earthy, rural novel. Her early...
Textual Production
Fay Weldon
FW
published Rebecca West, an unusual and enthusiastic biographical study.
FW
's grandmother claimed to have known both West and H. G. Wells
personally.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press.
778
Kester-Shelton, Pamela, editor. Feminist Writers. St James Press.
507
Family and Intimate relationships
Fay Weldon
During her marriage she and Edgar entertained the literary and avant-garde world: she later regaled her grand-daughter with irreverent stories of Joseph Conrad
, Jean Rhys
(Such a louche young woman),
Wells wrote about characters who defied conventional morality. In his own life, he married twice, and had a busy extramarital sexual career. He writes about this himself in the second volume of his autobiography (published...
Textual Production
H. G. Wells
He published a second memoir, The Anatomy of Frustration, in 1936. In the second volume of his autobiography, titled H.G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography, he describes his sexual...
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.
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...
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
,...
politics
Virginia Woolf
On 10 May Germany had invaded Holland and Belgium. In the event of an invasion of England, they could indeed expect a terrible personal fate, on account of their anti-war politics, Leonard's anti-war career and...
