Rebecca West

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Cicely (changed to Cicily) Isabel Fairfield (December 21, 1892–March 15, 1983), better known by her pen name Dame Rebecca West, DBE, was a British-Irish suffragist and writer famous for her novels, literary criticism, travel literature and for her relationship with H. G. Wells. A prolific, protean author, she wrote for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Sunday Telegraph, and The New York Herald Tribune. She also was an important correspondent for The Bookman.

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[edit] Biography

She was born in London.[1] Her father, an Irish journalist, deserted her Scottish mother while Cicely was still a child. The rest of the family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where she was educated at George Watson's Ladies College. She trained as an actress, taking the name "Rebecca West" from Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. She became involved in the women's suffrage movement before World War I, and worked as a journalist on Freewoman and the Clarion. She met H. G. Wells in 1913, and their affair lasted ten years. They had a son, Anthony West, though Wells was still in his second marriage at that time. West is also said to have had affairs with Charlie Chaplin and newspaper magnate Max Beaverbrook.[citation needed]

In 1930 she married a banker, Henry Maxwell Andrews, and they remained together until his death in 1968. Before and during World War II, West travelled widely, collecting material for books on travel and politics. She was present at the Nuremberg trials. Her later work as a writer and broadcaster reflected these experiences.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1949, and was raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1959.

West is buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey. [2]

[edit] Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • "I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
  • "It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion."
  • "Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and their audience."
  • "Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations."

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Non-Fiction

  • Henry James (1916)
  • The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews (1928)
  • St. Augustine (1933)
  • Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), a 1,181-page classic of travel literature, giving an account of Balkan history and ethnography, and the significance of Nazism, structured about her trip to Yugoslavia in 1937.
  • The Meaning of Treason (1949)
  • The New Meaning of Treason (1964)
  • A Train of Powder (1955)
  • The Court and the Castle: some treatments of a recurring theme (1958)
  • H G Wells and Rebecca West by Gordon N. Ray [7]
  • Ending in Earnest: A literary Log
  • Recurrent Theme
  • Lions and Lambs (co-author with David Low)
  • The Modern Rake's Progress (co-author with David Low)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rollyson, Carl E. (1995). Rebecca West: a saga of the century. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-59050-5. 
  2. ^ Rebecca West. Necropolis Notables. The Brookwood Cemetery Society. Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
  3. ^ First published in the UK by Macmillan in 1966, and published in the US by Viking Press also in 1966
  4. ^ From a copy of Cousin Rosamund with an afterword by Victoria Glendinning and published by Macmillan (London) in 1995
  5. ^ From Cousin Rosamund published by Macmillan (London) 1985
  6. ^ Detail from Cousin Rosamond published by Macmillan 1985
  7. ^ First published in the UK by Macmillan in 1974, and published in the US by Yale University Press also in 1974