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Rebecca West (1) (1892–1983)

Author of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia

For other authors named Rebecca West, see the disambiguation page.

47+ Works 7,764 Members 190 Reviews 30 Favorited

About the Author

Taking her name from one of Henrik Ibsen's strong-minded women, Rebecca West was a politically and socially active feminist all her long life. She had an intense 10-year affair with H.G. Wells, with whom she had a son. A brilliant and versatile novelist, critic, essayist, and political commentator, show more West's greatest literary achievement is perhaps her travel diary, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia (1942). Five years in the writing, it is the story of an Easter trip that she and her husband, British banker Henry Maxwell Andrews (whom she had married in 1930), made through Yugoslavia in 1937. A historical narrative with excellent reporting, it is essentially an analysis of Western culture. During World War II, she superintended British broadcast talks to Yugoslavia. Her remarkable reports of the treason trials of Lord Haw and John Amery appeared first in the New Yorker and are included with other stories about traitors in The Meaning of Treason (1947), which was expanded to deal with traitors and defectors since World War II as The New Meaning of Treason (1964). The Birds Fall Down (1966), which was a bestseller, is the story of a young Englishwoman caught in the grip of Russian terrorists. From a true story told to her more than half a century ago by the sister of Ford Madox Ford (who had heard it from her Russian husband), West "created a rich and instructive spy thriller, which contains an immense amount of brilliantly distributed information about the ideologies of the time, the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church, the conflicts of customs, belief, and temperament between Russians and Western Europeans, the techniques of espionage and counter-espionage, and the life of exiles in Paris" (New Yorker). Unlike that of her more famous contemporaries, her fiction is stylistically and structurally conventional, but it effectively details the evolution of daily life amid the backdrop of such historical disasters as the world wars. Her critical works include Arnold Bennett Himself, Henry James (1916), Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews, and The Court and the Castle (1957), a study of political and religious ideas in imaginative literature. In 1949, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Rebecca West, 1912

Series

Works by Rebecca West

The Return of the Soldier (1918) 1,547 copies
The Fountain Overflows (1956) 1,054 copies
The Birds Fall Down (1966) 530 copies
Harriet Hume (1929) 284 copies
The Thinking Reed (1936) 271 copies
This Real Night (1984) 254 copies
The Judge (1922) 252 copies
Cousin Rosamund (1985) 252 copies
The Meaning of Treason (1947) 225 copies
The New Meaning of Treason (1964) 222 copies
A Train of Powder (1955) 158 copies
The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935) — Author — 130 copies
Sunflower (1986) 120 copies
1900 (1982) — Author — 92 copies
Survivors in Mexico (2003) 90 copies
Family Memories (1648) 80 copies
Rebecca West: A Celebration (1977) 67 copies
Virago Omnibus II (1728) — Contributor — 38 copies
St. Augustine (1933) 28 copies
Henry James (1974) 17 copies
The Only Poet (1992) 15 copies
The Return of the Soldier [1982 film] — Original book — 8 copies
Ending in Earnest (1967) 5 copies
The Vassall Affair (1963) 2 copies
Parthenope (2006) 1 copy

Associated Works

Pinocchio (1883) — Afterword, some editions — 8,169 copies
Mistress to an age : a life of Madame de StaĂ«l (1958) — Introduction, some editions — 313 copies
The 40s: The Story of a Decade (2014) — Contributor — 275 copies
Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers (1993) — Contributor — 191 copies
The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage (2003) — Contributor — 172 copies
Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg (1777) — Editor, some editions — 157 copies
The Norton Book of Personal Essays (1997) — Contributor — 142 copies
My Disillusionment in Russia (1924) — Introduction, some editions — 125 copies
The Penguin Book of Women's Humour (1996) — Contributor — 117 copies
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures (1989) — Contributor — 113 copies
Saints for Now (1952) — Contributor — 103 copies
The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker (2021) — Contributor — 90 copies
Nuremberg (1978) — Foreword, some editions — 76 copies
Great Spy Stories From Fiction (1969) — Contributor, some editions — 75 copies
The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology (1990) — Contributor — 64 copies
Infinite Riches (1993) — Contributor — 54 copies
Witches' Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women (1984) — Contributor — 10 copies
The London Omnibus (1932) — Contributor — 7 copies
British and American Essays, 1905-1956 (1959) — Contributor — 7 copies
Agenda : Wyndham Lewis special issue — Contributor — 6 copies

Tagged

20th century (261) anthology (156) Balkans (144) biography (146) British (165) British literature (129) children (206) children's (225) children's literature (163) classic (232) classics (264) England (96) English literature (110) essays (254) fairy tales (166) fantasy (274) fiction (1,611) history (487) Italian (136) Italian literature (174) Italy (123) Kindle (105) literature (244) memoir (95) non-fiction (480) novel (306) philosophy (90) Pinocchio (96) read (103) Rebecca West (86) short stories (104) to-read (853) travel (350) unread (113) Virago (233) Virago Modern Classics (175) VMC (102) WWI (216) WWII (94) Yugoslavia (163)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
West, Rebecca
Legal name
Fairfield, Cicely Isabel (birth)
Other names
Andrews, Cicely Isabel
Birthdate
1892-12-21
Date of death
1983-03-15
Burial location
Brookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Woking, Surrey, England, UK
Gender
female
Nationality
UK
Birthplace
London, England, UK
Place of death
London, England, UK
Places of residence
London, England, UK
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Ibston, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Education
George Watson's Ladies College
Academy of Dramatic Art
Occupations
writer
author
novelist
Time and Tide (director)
Relationships
West, Anthony (son)
Wells, H. G. (lover)
Fairfield, Letitia (sister)
West, Henry Maxwell (husband)
Organizations
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Foreign Honorary ∙ Literature ∙ 1972)
Time and Tide
Awards and honors
Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature
Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1949)
Order of the British Empire (Dame Commander, 1959)
Women's Press Club Award for Journalism (1948)
Legion d'Honneur
Benson Medal (1966)
Short biography
Rebecca West was the pen name of Cicily Isabel Andrews, née Fairfield, born in London, England (some sources say Kerry, Ireland), to an Anglo-Irish-Scottish family. She was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland but had to leave school at 16. She went to London to train as an actress, and took her pseudonym from her role in the Henrik Ibsen play Rosmersholm. She became a journalist around 1911, working first for the feminist publications Freewoman and the Clarion, in support of women's right to vote, and later contributing essays and reviews to The New Republic, The New York Herald Tribune, The Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, and many other national newspapers and magazines in the UK and USA. She was at times a foreign correspondent, and wrote social and cultural criticism, book reviews, travel writing, fiction, and nonfiction. In 1918, she published her first novel, The Return of the Soldier. Other works included The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), The Fountain Overflows (1957), and The Birds Fall Down (1966). After visiting Yugoslavia and the Balkans in 1937, she published the two-volume Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942). Her reports on the Nuremberg trials following World War II were collected in A Train of Powder (1955). West was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1959. She had a 10-year liaison with H.G. Wells that began in 1913 and produced a son, Anthony West. At age 37, in 1930, she married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker.

Members

Discussions

February Read: Rebecca West in Virago Modern Classics (March 2017)
Group Read, March 2016: Harriet Hume in 1001 Books to read before you die (March 2016)
Rebecca West recommendations in Virago Modern Classics (June 2013)

Reviews

"I suppose that the subject of our tragedy written in spiritual terms, was that in Kitty he had turned from the type of woman that makes the body conqueror of the soul, and in me the type that mediates between the soul and the body and makes them run even and unhappy like a well-matched pair of carriage horses, and had given himself to a woman whose bleak habit it was to champion the soul against the body."

This is a war novel, but we are never at the front, and the focus is not on the soldier, Chris, but on the three women in his life--his wife Kitty, his cousin and childhood companion Jenny (who is also the narrator), and his first love Margaret. When the novel opens Kitty and Jenny are at Chris's estate, and he is away at the front, when they receive a visit from Margaret, a dowdy, lower-class woman who informs them that Chris has been wounded.

At first Kitty and Jenny refuse to believe Margaret, this drudge they have never heard of--why wasn't Kitty as Chris's wife informed of this by the war office? But it turns out to be true. Chris is shell-shocked and suffering from amnesia--he does not remember his wife Kitty or that they had a child who died. What he does remember is Margaret, his first love, who is now the dowdy woman who visited Kitty and Jenny.

Chris is returned to his estate to recuperate and to recover his memories. Despite various attempts to convince him that he is married to Kitty, he is happy only in the company of Margaret. Though she looks old, worn, and poor, she has an inner peace about her, and Chris sees, not her worn physical appearance but the inner glow that comes through. Kitty never warms to Margaret and wants only to bring Chris back to the present, even though "curing" him will mean sending him back to the front. Jenny wavers between letting Chris live happily in the past with Margaret or bringing him back to the present reality.

Although this is a war novel, we see and experience little of the war; instead we see the devastating effects of the war, what it does to one's senses, both to a soldier and to civilians. There is also a lot in this short novel about the struggle between the classes. It was very much grating on me to read how disdainfully Jenny and especially Kitty spoke about Margaret: "They hated her as the rich hate the poor as insect things that will struggle out of the crannies which are their decent home and introduce ugliness to the light of day...." The book was somewhat different from what I was expecting, but I'm glad I read it.

3 stars
… (more)
3 vote
Flagged
arubabookwoman | 77 other reviews | Jan 29, 2024 |
The wages of war pay far and long. The story is so heartbreakingly tragic, but beautifully told. Sentences run long and sometimes seem to lose the thread, but there are many rewards to be found in West's clever, poetic, evocative delivery. This book deserves its place on the 102 greatest books by female authors, which I'm slowly but surely working through.
 
Flagged
mlevel | 77 other reviews | Jan 22, 2024 |
A soldier, shell-shocked in the trenches of WWI, has lost all memory of the previous fifteen years, leaving him with idyllic memories of young love with an innkeeper's daughter. His arrogant upper-crust wife is a complete stranger, and a cousin (who relates the story) he remembers only as a child. A potential cure means he faces the memory of all the horrors of the front. Is this a real cure or is he better off sick? Even the doctor sees no urgency for change.

The opening chapter filled with upper class horror of anything below them almost put me off reading this book. A woman is noticed approaching the house and Kitty (the soldier's wife) is horrified - ugh, she is badly dressed, ugly, not one of us, don't open the door
 That attitude prevails. While the wife is painted as saintly, the other woman, her clothing, her umbrella, is cruelly disparaged.

West's descriptions of nature are lengthy and beautiful, but of necessity character development is minimal as she focuses in on the small group. It is unfortunate that the author used outrageous class prejudice to highlight the tragedy, evidently unable to to recognize that it would be just as devastating in any circumstances. The result is overly romantic but as the author was aged 24 when she wrote this, her first novel, in 1918, maybe it is understandable.
… (more)
½
 
Flagged
VivienneR | 77 other reviews | Apr 15, 2023 |
This is the story of a soldier during WWI who returns home shell-shocked. He can't remember the last 15 years of his life, including the marriage to his wife. He does remember a summer "love" and the two meet frequently in the garden, the wife begrudgingly agreeing that it might bring back Chris' memory. It doesn't and the wife grows more bitter. Not only is this about the horror of the Great War, it is the story of brutal class warfare. The author writes very lyrically. It was a very slow moving book. Favorite quote, "She isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you see her." 140 pages… (more)
½
 
Flagged
Tess_W | 77 other reviews | Feb 14, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
47
Also by
29
Members
7,764
Popularity
#3,140
Rating
3.8
Reviews
190
ISBNs
335
Languages
10
Favorited
30

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