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.
Its editorial team consisted of DM
(editor), Rebecca West
(assistant editor), and Grace Jardine
(sub-editor and editorial assistant).
Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990.
99
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
Formerly stored in a wicker trunk at the home of her niece Elaine Dyson Bate, DM
's papers are now at Princeton University
. Her collection contains manuscripts, papers, and letters to and from Rebecca West
Textual Production
Henrik Ibsen
This play was first published in Norwegian in 1886 and translated into English in 1889.
McFarlane, James, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
xxv
Florence Farr
played Rebecca in the first English staging of play; Rebecca West
took her pseudonym from the play's...
Textual Production
Flora Macdonald Mayor
This novel sold reasonably well and FMM
was again lauded by several contemporary critics, including E. M. Forster
, G. B. Stern
, and Rebecca West
.
Williams, Merryn. Six Women Novelists, Macmillan, 1987.
45
Keith, Rhonda. British Novelists 1890-1929: Modernists. Editor Staley, Thomas F., Gale Research Company, 1985, pp. 169-71.
Over the years, RM
published several dozen literary articles in a wide range of magazines, newspapers, and commemorative volumes. She wrote on past and contemporary literary figures, including Leslie Stephen
, Stella Benson
, Rebecca West
Birkett, Jennifer. Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life. Oxford University Press, 2009.
123n53
Jameson, Storm, editor. Challenge to Death. Constable, 1934.
prelims
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row, 1970.
326-7
Textual Production
Naomi Mitchison
By the early 1930s NM
was making as much by her writing, in real terms, as nearly fifty years later. She reviewed novels—reading at great speed even while breast-feeding, since she claimed that [i]f the...
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
Under an editorial team that included DM
and Rebecca West
, the last issue of The Freewoman was published.
Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990.
83
Textual Production
Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information
once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row, 1970.
The anthology of British women writers she published in 1990 with Michael Joseph
as The Parchment Moon: An Anthology of Modern Women's Short Stories was reprinted the following year as The Penguin Book of Modern...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Pamela Frankau
In this book PF
offers her impressions of celebrities
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
119
met through her great-aunt Eliza Aria
. Place is important too, like her vivid yet dreamlike description of Sligachan on the Isle of Skye...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Storm Jameson
Janet Montefiore
has noted that in A Cup of Tea for Mr. Thorgill Jameson included a rancorous portrait of Rebecca West
in the character of Retta Spencer-Savage, a celebrated anti-Communist writer who has built her...
Travel
Pamela Frankau
She went on to Alassio in Italy. Next time she visited the south of France she went as the guest of Rebecca West
.
Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson, 1935.
143, 189
Like most people of her class and period,...
Travel
Violet Trefusis
In late 1927, Violet travelled with the same party through the United States. They had tea at the White House
and saw Rebecca West
while in Washington, DC.
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
69-70
Violence
Mary Gawthorpe
This description comes from Cicily Fairfield (the future Rebecca West)
, who was observing the election campaign. West also said that stewards commonly used great physical violence, and she attributed Gawthorpe's health breakdown directly to...
