Rebecca west biography

British feminist and author (1892–1983)

For the Ibsen character, see Rosmersholm.

Dame Rebecca West DBE
Portrait of Westmost by Madame Yevonde
Born	Cecily Isabel Fairfield (1892-12-21)21 December 1892 London, England
Died	15 March 1983(1983-03-15) (aged 90) London, England
Occupation	Writer
Children	Anthony West

Dame Cecily Isabel FairfieldDBE (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, member of the fourth estate, literary critic and travel litt‚rateur.

An author who wrote blessed many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Well-disposed Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a be consistent with for The Bookman.

Her higher ranking works include Black Lamb extra Grey Falcon (1941), on glory history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the City trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning admire Treason (first published as cool magazine article in 1945 vital then expanded to the complete in 1947), later The Novel Meaning of Treason (1964), unadorned study of the trial show consideration for American-born fascist William Joyce careful others; The Return of rectitude Soldier (1918), a modernist Existence War I novel; and birth "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows (1956), This Real Night (published posthumously hut 1984), and Cousin Rosamund (1985).

Time called her "indisputably nobility world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was masquerade CBE in 1949,^[1] and DBE in 1959;^[2] in each weekend case, the citation reads: "writer settle down literary critic". She took illustriousness pseudonym "Rebecca West" from justness rebellious young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen.

She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

Biography

Rebecca West was tribal Cecily Isabel Fairfield^[3] in 1892 in London, England, and grew up in a home comprehensive of intellectual stimulation, political controversy, lively company, books and music.^[4] Her mother, Isabella, a Scotchman, was an accomplished pianist on the contrary did not pursue a tuneful career after her marriage lay at the door of Charles Fairfield.

The Anglo-Irish River had been a Confederate litter-bearer at the siege of Richmond in the US Civil War,^[5] and had returned to loftiness UK to become a newsman of considerable reputation but economic incompetence. He deserted his brotherhood when Cecily was eight time old. He never rejoined them, and died impoverished and solitary in a boarding house bay Liverpool in 1906, when Cecily was 14.^[6] The rest help the family moved to Capital, Scotland, where Cecily was cultured at George Watson's Ladies Academy.

She had to leave nursery school in 1907 due to copperplate bout of tuberculosis.^[7] She chose not to return after sick from the illness, later report her schooling at Watson's trade in akin to a "prison".^[8]

West esoteric two older sisters. Letitia ("Lettie"), who was the best erudite of the three, became tune of the first fully equipped female doctors in Britain, primate well as a barrister bully the Inns of Court.

Winifred ("Winnie"), the middle sister, wed Norman Macleod, Principal Assistant Amanuensis in the Admiralty, and one day director general of Greenwich Shelter old-fashioned. Winnie's two children, Alison instruction Norman, became closely involved discern Rebecca's life as she got older;^[9] Alison Macleod would work out a literary career of prudent own.^[10] West trained as evocation actress in London, taking position name "Rebecca West" from rank rebellious young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen.^[5] She allow Lettie became involved in glory women's suffrage movement, participating terminate street protests.

Meanwhile, West attacked as a journalist for description feminist weekly Freewoman and greatness Clarion, drumming up support shadow the suffragette cause.^[5]

Affairs and motherhood

In September 1912, West accused authority famously libertine writer H. Frizzy. Wells of being "the Clasp Maid among novelists." This was part of a provocative analysis of his novel Marriage publicized in Freewoman,^[11] an obscure pole short-lived feminist weekly review.

Honesty review attracted Wells's interest build up an invitation to lunch strict his home. The two writers became lovers in late 1913, despite Wells being both wedded and twenty-six years older puzzle West.^[12] Their 10-year relationship descend upon a son, Anthony West, autochthon on 4 August 1914. Glowing was behind her move close by Marine Parade, Leigh-on-Sea in County, where she lived between 1917 and 1919.^[13][14] Their friendship lasted until Wells's death in 1946.

West is also said unearthing have had relationships with Dickhead Chaplin, newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook,^[15] and journalist John Gunther.^[16]

Early continuance and marriage

West established her designation as a spokeswoman for reformer and socialist causes and pass for a critic, turning out essays and reviews for The Another Republic, New York Herald Tribune, New York American, New Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, and multitudinous more newspapers and magazines.

Martyr Bernard Shaw said in 1916 that "Rebecca West could meet a pen as brilliantly chimpanzee ever I could and even more savagely."^[17] During the Decennary, West began a lifelong garb of visits to the Leagued States to give lectures, befitting artists, and get involved speak the political scene. She was a great friend of goodness novelist G.

B. Stern, extra Stern and Clemence Dane stayed with her in America hem in 1924.^[18] There, she befriended CIA founder Allen Dulles, Charlie Comedian, Harold Ross of The Original Yorker, and historian Arthur Historian Jr., among many other first-class figures of the day. Relation lifelong fascination with the Unified States culminated in 1948 in the way that President Truman presented her learn the Women's Press Club Premium for Journalism, calling her "the world's best reporter."^[17]

In 1930, use the age of 37, she married a banker, Henry Physicist Andrews, and they remained nominally together, despite one public complication just before his death worry 1968.^[19] West's writing brought jilt considerable wealth, and, by 1940, she owned a Rolls-Royce most important a grand country estate, Ibstone House, in the Chiltern Hills of southern England.

During Sphere War II, West housed Jugoslavian refugees in the spare followers of her blacked-out manor, abstruse she used the grounds sort a small dairy farm viewpoint vegetable plot, agricultural pursuits go off continued long after the warfare had ended.

Later life

As Westerly grew older, she turned denote broader political and social issues, including mankind's propensity to make known violent injustice on itself.

Earlier and during World War II, West travelled widely, collecting counsel for books on travel person in charge politics. In 1936–38, she grateful three trips to Yugoslavia, nifty country she came to attachment, seeing it as the articulation of European history since glory late Middle Ages. Her non-fiction masterpiece, Black Lamb and Bloodless Falcon is an amalgamation flash her impressions from these trips.

New York Times reviewer Katherine Woods wrote: "In two mock incredibly full-packed volumes one detailed the most gifted and penetrating of modern English novelists bracket critics has produced not sole the magnification and intensification archetypal the travel book form, however, one may say, its apotheosis." West was assigned by Ross' magazine to cover the Metropolis trials for The New Yorker, an experience she memorialized slash the book A Train in shape Powder.

In 1950, she was elected a Foreign Honorary 1 of the American Academy pounce on Arts and Sciences.^[20] She additionally went to South Africa summon 1960 to report on separation in a series of relationship for The Sunday Times, specially regarding a prominent trial expend a seditious uprising aiming principle establish Communist rule.

She fortuitously by the bye misidentified a South African judge^[21] for some questions put vulgar another judge and was sued for libel along with representation Sunday Times whose editor, Attend Hodson, failed to support West.^[22] She wrote "My problem denunciation complicated by the fact go wool-gathering the defence, the people who would naturally be against nobleness Judge and for me, increase in value mostly Communist and won't misappropriate a finger for me.

Delight worries me a lot. It's so hard to work become infected with this hanging over me." She felt her only support was her friends, the anti-apartheid statesman Bernard Friedman and his bride, with whom she stayed greet Johannesburg. "I will get rule this case. But it isn't easy to feel that tedious people are for no rationale that you know of cursed by an intention to destroy you; and I also mat I was letting you out in South Africa.

I be blessed with been deeply grateful for each the kindness and sympathy boss about have shown me and Hysterical thought of Tall Trees significance a warm place in smart chilly world."^[22]

She travelled extensively be a smash hit into old age. In 1966 and 1969, she undertook combine long journeys to Mexico, befitting fascinated by the indigenous urbanity of the country and university teacher mestizo population.

She stayed show actor Romney Brent in Mexico City and with Katherine (Kit) Wright, a long-time friend, gravel Cuernavaca.^[23]

Old age

Her husband became both sleepy and inattentive as settle down got older. The sleepiness ornery to a car accident in no one was hurt on the other hand Henry was charged with pathetic driving.

He became obsessed involve the Norwegian ballerina Gerd Larsen; he would refuse to progress with West, instead preferring cuddle return to London to attach with Larsen. West initially advised this to be purely affiliate husband's infatuation, but came authenticate think that Larsen was possessed by money. At her husband's funeral West had the heavygoing problem of Larsen's request make ill be among the mourners, collected though she had only methodical him for 18 months.

Henry's will left £5,000 for Larsen.^[19] After her husband's death break off 1968, West discovered that elegance had been unfaithful with overturn women.^[19]

After she was widowed, she moved to London, where she bought a spacious apartment dominating Hyde Park. Unfortunately, it was next door to the Persian embassy.

During the May 1980 incident, West, then 87, locked away to be evacuated.^[24] In rectitude last two decades of cause life, West kept up trig very active social life, manufacture friends with Martha Gellhorn, Doris Lessing, Bernard Levin, comedian Frankie Howerd, and film star don director Warren Beatty, who filmed her for the production Reds, a biography of journalist Ablutions Reed and his connection narrow the Russian Revolution.

She extremely spent time with scholars specified as Jane Marcus and Beautiful Kime Scott, who began touch chronicle her feminist career instruction varied work.^[25] She wrote get rid of impurities an unabated pace, penning expert reviews for The Sunday Telegraph, publishing her last novel The Birds Fall Down (1966), mount overseeing the film version long-awaited the story by BBC multiply by two 1978.

The last work promulgated in her lifetime was 1900 (1982). 1900 explored the resolve year of Queen Victoria's hold up reign, which was a major in many cultural and public respects.

At the same revolt, West worked on sequels put your name down her autobiographically inspired novel The Fountain Overflows (1957); although she had written the equivalent catch the fancy of two more novels for goodness planned trilogy, she was on no account satisfied with the sequels soar did not publish them.

She also tinkered at great reach with an autobiography, without prophesy to closure, and started cumulate of stories without finishing them. Much of her work evacuate the late phase of have time out life was published posthumously, with Family Memories (1987), This Genuine Night (1984), Cousin Rosamund (1985), The Only Poet (1992), plus Survivors in Mexico (2003).

Raw works from her early time, notably Sunflower (1986) and The Sentinel (2001) were also publicised after her death, so go off at a tangent her oeuvre was augmented tough about one third by posthumous publications.

Relationship with her son

West's relationship with her son, Suffragist West, was not a disadvantaged one.

The rancour between them came to a head during the time that Anthony, himself a gifted penman, his father's biographer (H. Vague. Wells: Aspects of a Life [1984]), and a novelist, in print Heritage (1955), a fictionalised memoirs. West never forgave her personage for depicting in Heritage distinction relationship between an illegitimate counterpart and his two world-famous, spinster parents, and for portraying character mother in unflattering terms.

Ethics depiction of West's alter susceptibilities in Heritage as a wily, unloving actress (West had educated as an actress in take it easy youth) and poor caregiver in this fashion wounded West that she indigent off relations with her daughter and threatened to sue harry publisher who would bring improbable Heritage in England. She stifled an English edition of interpretation novel, which was only in print there after her death, give it some thought 1984.

Although there were interim rapprochements between her and Suffragist, a state of alienation persisted between them, causing West bummer until her dying hour. She fretted about her son's hope for from her deathbed, but conj at the time that asked whether he should wool sent for, answered: "perhaps keen, if he hates me advantageous much."^[26]

Death

West suffered from failing view breadth of view and high blood pressure dynasty the late 1970s, and became increasingly frail.

Her last months were mostly spent in bottom, at times delirious and provoke times lucid; she complained guarantee she was dying too slowly.^[26] She died on 15 Step 1983, and is buried fatigued Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.^[27]

Upon hearing a selection of her death, William Shawn, spread editor in chief of The New Yorker, said:

Rebecca Westside was one of the giants and will have a durable place in English literature.

Pollex all thumbs butte one in this century wrote more dazzling prose, or confidential more wit, or looked consider the intricacies of human manufacture and the ways of probity world more intelligently.^[17]

She is venerable with a blue plaque monkey Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, restlessness childhood home which also in case the setting for her fresh The Judge.^[28]

Politics

West grew up effect a home filled with discussions of world affairs.

Her clergyman was a journalist who again and again involved himself in controversial issues. He brought home Russian guerillas and other political activists, take their debates helped to get to your feet West's sensibility, which took figure in novels such as The Birds Fall Down, set have round pre-revolution Russia.^[29] But the strategic event that moulded West's statecraft was the Dreyfus affair.^[30] Picture impressionable Rebecca learned early slow down just how powerful was class will to persecute minorities predominant to subject individuals to incredible suspicion based on flimsy ascertain and mass frenzy.^[31] West locked away a keen understanding of description psychology of politics, how movements and causes could sustain living soul on the profound need treaty believe or disbelieve in a-ok core of values—even in untruth of reality.^[32]

Although she was dialect trig militant feminist and active suffragette, and published a perceptive lecturer admiring profile of Emmeline Pankhurst, West also criticised the campaign of Pankhurst's daughter, Christabel, put up with the sometimes doctrinaire aspects time off the Pankhursts' Women's Social refuse Political Union (WSPU).^[33]

The first senior test of West's political point of view was the Bolshevik Revolution.

Several on the left saw show off as the beginning of clean new, better world, and magnanimity end of the crimes classic capitalism. West regarded herself owing to a member of the unattended to, having attended Fabian socialist season schools as a girl. All the more to West, both the Repel and the revolutionaries were mistrust.

Even before the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, Westernmost expressed her doubts that affairs in Russia could serve gorilla a model for socialists problem Britain or anywhere else.^[5][34]

West render a heavy price for stifle cool reaction to the Indigen Revolution; her positions increasingly single her.

When Emma Goldman visited Britain in 1924 after amaze Bolshevik violence firsthand, West was exasperated that British intellectuals neglected Goldman's testimony and her word to the wise against Bolshevik tyranny.^[35]

For all brew censures of communism, however, Westbound was hardly an uncritical fellow traveller of Western democracies.

Thus instruct in 1919–1920, she excoriated the Impractical government for deporting Goldman build up for the infamous Palmer Raids.^[36] She was also appalled shake-up the failure of Western democracies to come to the keep a tally of Republican Spain, and she gave money to the Democratic cause.

A staunch anti-fascist, Westward attacked both the Conservative governments of her own country safe appeasing Adolf Hitler and back up colleagues on the left let slip their pacifism.

Neither side, delight in her view, understood the presentiment Nazism posed. Unlike many warning the left, she also distrusted Joseph Stalin. To West, Commie had a criminal mentality give it some thought communism facilitated.^[37] She was mad when the Allies switched their loyalties as to Yugoslav grit movements by deciding in 1943 to start backing the Communist-led Partisans led by Tito corner Yugoslavia, thus abandoning their hind of Draža Mihailović's Chetniks, whom she considered the legitimate Jugoslav resistance.

She expressed her cause offense and opinions on the Allies' switch in Yugoslavia by scribble the satirical short story aristocratic "Madame Sara's Magic Crystal", on the contrary decided not to publish scenery upon discussion with Orme Painter, Assistant Under-Secretary of State equal the Foreign Office.^[38] Writing take her diary, West mentioned zigzag Sargent had persuaded her deviate "the recognition of Tito was made by reason of Country military necessities, and for negation other reason." Following Sargent's speak, she described her decision arrange to publish the story importance an expression of "personal enthusiasm to sacrifice myself to rank needs of my country."^[39] Care the war, West's anti-Communism bright as she saw Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other Eastern add-on Central European states succumb telling off Soviet domination.

In 1951 she provided a critical review position Alistair Cooke's sympathetic portrait have Alger Hiss during his postwar trials from a classical liberalism point of view.^[40] It enquiry not surprising in this instance that West reacted to Freed Senator Joseph McCarthy differently stick up her colleagues.

They saw pure demagogue terrorising liberals and leftists with baseless accusations of Politician conspiracy. West saw an coot blundering into the minefield encourage Communist subversion. For her, Pol was right to pursue Communists with fervour, even if cap methods were roughshod, though organized mild reaction to McCarthy piqued powerful revulsion among those spasm the left and dismay plane among anti-Communist liberals.

She refused, however, to amend her views.^[41]

Although West's anti-communism earned the elevated regard of conservatives, she not in a million years considered herself one of them. In postwar Britain, West systematic Labour and welcomed the Exertion landslide of 1945 but crosspiece out against domination of class Labour Party by British dealing unions, and thought left-wing politicians such as Michael Foot suitable.

She had mixed feelings transmit the Callaghan government. West pet Margaret Thatcher, not for Thatcher's policies, but for Thatcher's attainment in rising to the go to town of a male-dominated sphere.^[42]

In justness end, West's anti-communism remained grandeur centrepiece of her politics as she so consistently challenged position communists as legitimate foes help the status quo in financier countries.

In West's view, socialism, like fascism, was merely a- form of authoritarianism. Communists were under party discipline, and hence could never speak for themselves; West was a supreme process of an intellectual who crosspiece for herself, no matter putting her comments might injure affiliate. Indeed, few writers explicitly fкted how much West's embrace pageant unpopular positions hurt her liking the left.

A whole propagation of writers abandoned West snowball refused to read her, bit Doris Lessing suggested.^[43]

Religion

West's parents had her baptised into ethics Church of England two months after birth^[44] and she estimated herself a Christian, though blueprint unconventional believer.

At times, she found God to be wicked; at other times she wise him merely ineffectual and defeated.^[45] However, she revered Christ whilst the quintessentially good man,^[46] she had great respect for justness literary, pictorial, and architectural manifestations of the Christian ethos, become peaceful she considered faith a regard tool to grapple with interpretation conundrums of life and righteousness mysteries of the cosmos.^[47] Though her writings are full put references to the Bible allow ecclesiastical history, she was for the most part anti-doctrinaire and occasionally blasphemous.

Extract 1926 she expressed the bohemian belief that "Christianity must replica regarded not as a terminal revelation but as a juncture of revelation."^[48] Moreover, she forsaken specific articles of belief specified as the virgin birth, Modern sin, the Atonement, and Caution. Her contribution to Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Letters Series, Letter take in hand a Grandfather (1933), is shipshape and bristol fashion declaration of "my faith, which seems to some unfaith"^[49] masked as philosophical fiction.

Written make the midst of the So-so Depression, Letter to a Grandfather traces the progressive degeneration souk the notion of Providence formulate the ages, concluding skeptically mosey "the redemptive power of religious grace no longer seemed thinkable, nor very respectable in probity arbitrary performance that was described for it."^[50] As for rectitude Atonement, Black Lamb and Wan Falcon is in part intentional as a refutation of rove very doctrine, which she axiom as having sparked a extreme obsession with sacrifice throughout integrity Christian era and, specifically, chimp having prompted Neville Chamberlain scheduled formulate his policy of reconcilement, which she vehemently opposed.

She wrote:

All our Western thought run through founded on this repulsive front that pain is the starched price of any good thing ... [Augustine] developed a theory dressingdown the Atonement which was nonsense, yet had the whitewash to convince ... This monstrous view supposes that God was drive round the bend with man for his sins and that He wanted sort out punish him for these, cry in any way that lustiness lead to his reformation, nevertheless simply by inflicting pain pound him; and that He lawful Christ to suffer this pang instead of man and afterward was willing on certain provisos to treat man as granting he had not committed these sins.

This theory flouts do your best at all points, for lawful is not possible that expert just God should forgive community who are wicked because other person who was good endured agony by being nailed chance on a cross.^[51]

World War II daze her into a more screwball belief: "I believe if wind up are looking for the heartfelt, the truth of the Christlike religion will come out arm meet them."^[52] In the anciently 1950s, she thought she challenging a mystical revelation in Author and actively tried to change to Catholicism.^[53] There was adroit precedent in her family promulgate this action, as her nurture, Letitia, had earlier converted just now Catholicism, thereby causing quite precise stir, but West's attempt was short-lived, and she confessed go-slow a friend: "I could go on with being clever Catholic ...

I don't want, Farcical can't bear to, become deft Graham Greene and Evelyn Author, and I cannot believe ensure I am required to agreement such a price for salvation."^[54] Her writings of the Decennium and early 1970s again debauch a profound mistrust towards God: "The case against religion equitable the responsibility of God encouragement the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to conceal the good things said push off Him in the Bible, bracket consequently to believe anything cut off says about Him."^[55]

Alongside her distinguishable Christianity, West was fascinated right Manichaeanism.^[56] She describes the Manichean idea that the world appreciation a mixture of two primaeval kingdoms, one of light leadership other of darkness, as come to an end "extremely useful conception of life" affirming that a "fusion remark light and darkness" is "the essential human character."^[57] On integrity other hand, West criticised "the strictly literal mind of rank founder [of Manichaeanism] and king followers" and what she detected as the meanness of Christianly heretics who adopted Manichaean ideas.^[58] West states that "the huge of modern history could weakness deduced from the popularity make out this heresy in Western Europe: its inner sourness, its vote for hate over love person in charge for war over peace, corruption courage about dying, its 1 about living." Regarding the accomplishment of Manichaean heresies by rendering Christian authorities West says go wool-gathering whilst "it is our attend to to sympathise with the careworn hare...

much that we get of Western European heretics accomplishs us suspect that here birth quarry was less of top-hole hare than a priggish skunk."^[58] Nonetheless, Manichean influence persists detainee an unpublished draft of West's own memoirs where she writes: "I had almost no side of the road of holding faith of whatever religious kind except a concern in a wholly and at length defeated God, a hypothesis which I now accept but out of condition for a long time friend reject, I could not brave it."^[59]

West's interest in Manichaeanism reflects her lifelong struggle with rank question of how to mete out with dualisms.

At times she appears to favour the put together of opposites, for which Metropolis served as a model: "church and state, love and brute, life and death, were embark on be fused again as forecast Byzantium."^[60] More dominant, however, was her tendency to view rendering tensions generated in the time between dualistic terms as vital and creative; hence, her antipathy to homosexuality and her instance not to confuse the guide for feminist emancipation with honesty woman's desire to become 1 a man.

Her insistence dispersal the fundamental difference between other ranks and women reveals her essentialism,^[61] but it also bespeaks go backward innate Manichaean sensibility. She sought respect and equal rights have a thing about women, but at the by a long way time she required that corps retain their specifically feminine bosh, notably an affinity with life: "Men have a disposition helter-skelter violence; women have not.

Providing one says that men lookout on the side of decease, women on the side loosen life, one seems to mistrust making an accusation against other ranks. One is not doing that."^[62] One reason why she does not want to make stick in accusation against men is turn they are simply playing their assigned role in a unsound universe.

Only love can meliorate destructive aspects of the sex-antagonism: "I loathe the way say publicly two cancers of sadism crucial masochism eat into the reproductive life of humanity, so wander the one lifts the skirmish and the other offers gore to the blow, and both are drunken with the uncultivated pleasure of misery and come undone not proceed with love's skill of building a shelter stay away from the cruelty of the universe."^[63] In addition to the effort of love, female emancipation run through crucial to removing the proper, professional, and social stigma related with the notion of influence "weaker sex," without trying pore over do away altogether with honourableness temperamental and metaphysical aspects be proper of the gender dualism itself.^{[citation needed]} Thus, the "sex war" affirmed in West's early short story "Indissoluble Matrimony" (1914) elevates honourableness female character, Evadne, in character end because she accepts dignity terms of the contest impoverished superficially trying to "win" saunter war.

The task of accommodative dualisms can also be overlook in West's political propensities. Style Bernard Schweizer has argued: "St. Augustine and Schopenhauer emphasized blue blood the gentry fallenness of human life, implying a quietistic stance that could be confused with conservatism, deep-rooted the Reclus brothers [famous Romance anarchists] urged her to outbreak against such pessimistic determinism.

West's characteristically heroic personal and accustomed vision is a result appreciate these two contending forces."^[64] West's conviction that humanity will fulfill its highest potentials conj admitting it adheres to the procedure of process reflects the changeless preoccupation: "Process is her greatest encompassing doctrine," states Peter Writer.

"Reconciling her dualism, it captures the best aspects of representation male and female principles."^[65]

Cultural references

Long time book reviewer and chief editor at Time, Whittaker Digs, considered West "a novelist work note ... a distinguished literary critic ...

above all ... one of significance greatest of living journalists."^[5]

Virginia Writer questioned Rebecca West being labeled as an "arrant feminist" owing to she offended men by expression they are snobs in crutch two of A Room pray to One's Own: "[W]hy was Freezing West an arrant feminist nurse making a possibly true allowing uncomplimentary statement about the cover up sex?"

Bill Moyers's interview "A Visit With Dame Rebecca West," recorded in her London fair when she was 89, was aired by PBS in July 1981.

In a review cut into the interview, John O'Connor wrote that "Dame Rebecca emerges reorganization a formidable presence. When she finds something or somebody disagreeable, the adjective suddenly becomes withering."^[66]

West's first novel, The Return have a high regard for the Soldier, was turned impact a major motion picture jammy 1982, directed by Alan Bridges, starring Alan Bates, Glenda Singer, and Julie Christie.

More new, an adaptation of The Reimburse of the Soldier for description stage by Kelly Younger patrician Once a Marine took West's theme of shell-shock-induced amnesia take up applied it to a confederate returning from the war plod Iraq with PTSD.

There keep been two plays about Wife West produced since 2004.

That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers, tough Carl Rollyson, Helen Macleod, person in charge Anne Bobby, is a one-man monologue in which an player playing Rebecca West recounts dismiss life through some of supplementary most famous articles, letters, come to rest books. Tosca's Kiss, a 2006 play by Kenneth Jupp, retells West's experience covering the City trials for The New Yorker.

Robert D. Kaplan's influential game park Balkan Ghosts (1994) is pull out all the stops homage to West's Black Innocent and Grey Falcon (1941), which he calls "this century's focal point travel book."^[67]

In February 2006, BBC broadcast a radio version make acquainted West's novel The Fountain Overflows, dramatized by Robin Brook, come by six 55-minute installments.

Bibliography

Fiction

• 1914 – Indissoluble Matrimony, a controversial keep apart story which was first accessible in Blast No. 1. Drawing by Yolanda Morató for high-mindedness Spanish publishing house Zut, security was also published in goodness Spanish edition of Blast Maladroit thumbs down d.

  1 (Madrid: Juan March Essence, 2010). This novella challenges several issues about feminism and women's involvement in politics in pre-war Britain.

• 1918 – The Return be in command of the Soldier, the first Faux War I novel written through a woman, about a shell-shocked, amnesiac soldier returning from Existence War I in hopes look up to being reunited with his twig love, a working-class woman, in lieu of of continuing to live partner his upper-class wife.
• 1922 – The Judge, a brooding, passionate original combining Freudian Oedipal themes surpass suffragism and an existential stultify on cosmic absurdity.
• 1929 – Harriet Hume, a modernist story display a piano-playing prodigy and make public obsessive lover, a corrupt politician.
• 1935 – The Harsh Voice: Yoke Short Novels, contains the wee story "The Salt of influence Earth," featuring Alice Pemberton, whose obsessive altruism becomes so interdiction that her husband plots relax murder.

  This was adapted purpose The Alfred Hitchcock Hour considerably "The Paragon" starring Joan Fontaine (season 1, episode 20) expect 1963.^[68] An additional story reject the collection, "There is Cack-handed Conversation", is the tale observe a romance as told overlook hindsight by both parties, only a caddish Frenchman and dignity other a coarse American lady.

  This story was adapted funds an hour-long radio drama speak 1950 on NBC University Theatre and featured a commentary enormity West's story and writing talents by Katherine Anne Porter.

• 1936 – The Thinking Reed, a story about the corrupting influence outline wealth even on originally snappish people.

  Perhaps a disguised self-critique of her own elegant lifestyle.

• 1956 – The Fountain Overflows, copperplate semi-autobiographical novel weaving a bewitching cultural, historical, and psychological arras of the first decade defer to the 20th century, reflected in and out of the prism of the well-endowed, eccentric Aubrey family.
• 1966 – The Birds Fall Down, spy butter up based on the deeds prop up the historical double agent Yevno Azef.^[69]
• 1984 – This Real Night, sequel to The Fountain Overflows published posthumously
• 1985 – Cousin Rosamund, final, unfinished installment of probity "Aubrey Trilogy" published posthumously^[70]
• 1986 – Sunflower, published posthumously, about trig tense love-relationship between an player and a politician, reminiscent draw round West's relationship with H.

  Blurred. Wells.

• 2002 – The Sentinel, excision by Kathryn Laing and publicized posthumously, West's very first lingering piece of fiction, an uncompleted novel about the suffragist expend energy in Britain, including grim scenes of female incarceration and force-feeding.

Non-fiction

• 1916 – Henry James
• 1928 – The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews, a blend of modernist academic criticism and cognitive science, counting a long essay explaining ground West disliked James Joyce's Ulysses, though she judged it emblematic important book
• 1931 – Ending operate Earnest: A Literary Log
• 1932 – Arnold Bennett Himself, John Day
• 1933 – St.

  Augustine, first psycho-biography of the Christian Church Father

• 1934 – The Modern Rake's Progress (co-authored with cartoonist David Low)
• 1941 – Black Lamb and Ashen Falcon, a 1,181-page classic near travel literature, giving an novel of Balkan history and anthropology, and the significance of Stalinism, structured around her trip know Yugoslavia in 1937
• 1949 – The Meaning of Treason, edit advanced 1964 – The New Meeting of Treason
• 1955 – A Underway of Powder
• 1958 – The Gaze at and the Castle: some treatments of a recurring theme, unequalled revisionist interpretations of literary humanities, including Hamlet and Kafka's stories
• 1963 – The Vassall Affair
• 1982 – 1900, cultural history and captivating "thick description" of this high-priority year
• 1982 – The Young Rebecca, West's early, radical journalism detail The Freewoman and Clarion, lessen by Jane Marcus
• 1987 – Family Memories: An Autobiographical Journey, West's autobiographical musings which remained esoteric during her life, assembled view edited by Faith Evans
• 2000 – The Selected Letters of Wife West, edited by Bonnie Kime Scott
• 2003 – Survivors in Mexico,^[71] posthumous work about West's connect trips to Mexico in 1966 and 1969, edited by Physiologist Schweizer
• 2005 – Woman as Chief and Thinker, re-issues of cruel of West's best essays, heavy with her short-story "Parthenope"
• 2010 – The Essential Rebecca West: Ungathered Prose,^[72]

Select criticism and biography

• Wolfe, Dick (1 November 1971).

  Rebecca West: artist and thinker. Southern Algonquian University Press. ISBN .

• Deakin, Motley Oppressor. (1980). Rebecca West. Twayne Authors. Twayne. ISBN .
• Orel, Harold (1986). The literary achievement of Rebecca West. Macmillan.

  ISBN .

• Glendinning, Victoria (1987). Rebecca West: A Life. Knopf. ISBN .
• Rollyson, Carl E. (1996). Rebecca West: a life. Scribner. ISBN .
• Rollyson, Carl (2007) [1998]. The Literary Heritage of Rebecca West. iUniverse. ISBN .
• Norton, Ann V.

  (2000). Paradoxical Feminism: The Novels of Rebecca West. International Scholars Publications. ISBN .

• Schweizer, Physiologist (2002). Rebecca West: heroism, uprising, and the female epic. Greenwood. ISBN .
• Rollyson, Carl (2005). Rebecca Western and the God That Failed: Essays.

  iUniverse. ISBN .

• Schweizer, Bernard, replication. (2006). Rebecca West Today: Coeval Critical Approaches. University of River Press. ISBN .

References

External links