Rebecca West (1892–1983) was a major figure in twentieth-century literature who was renowned as a novelist, journalist, and literary critic, as well as a noted feminist and writer of political and social criticism. West’s vast body of writing included eleven novels—among them The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund—four collections of essays, and dozens of magazine articles and reviews. Throughout her career, she was celebrated for her eloquent prose and pointed opinions on a variety of topics, from feminism and communism to literary works.
Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield on December 21, 1892, in London, she was the daughter of a trained pianist and a prominent journalist. Her father, Charles, was more talented with words than with finances, however, and would leave the family when West was just nine years old and die in poverty a few years later. Her mother, a Scotswoman, moved West and her two sisters to Edinburgh where they attended George Watson’s Ladies College. After a bout with tuberculosis at sixteen, West was unable to return to school due to the family’s financial situation and would not receive further formal education. A great fan of the theater, she auditioned for the Academy of Dramatic Art in London and attended the school for three terms.
Both West’s activism and writing career began when she was a young woman. Perhaps inspired by her own experiences with her unreliable father, West was a lifelong feminist and as a schoolgirl worked for women’s suffrage by joining the Votes for Women Club. In London, she made her first foray into journalism, writing a theater review for the London Evening Standard. As a young journalist she adopted the pen name Rebecca West, the name of an Ibsen character, to protect her family from her controversial views, of which she had many.
Writing under her new pen name, she gained attention working at the feminist weekly The Freewoman, through which she became acquainted with social activists and literary luminaries of the day. Her disdainful 1911 review of H.G. Wells’s novel Marriage elicited both ire and an invitation to lunch from the author—a meeting that resulted in a love affair with the married Wells, who was twenty years her senior. West continued her writing, expanding her reach to more literary journals, but in 1914 found herself pregnant. Wells arranged for West to quietly move to the country while she was pregnant with their son, Anthony West. The relationship with Wells continued for twelve more years, until 1926, and in 1930 West married prominent banker Henry Maxwell Andrews.
While awaiting the birth of her son, West began her first book, Henry James, a critical analysis of the author, which was published in 1916. In 1918, she established herself as a novelist with the publication of The Return of the Soldier, which received critical praise in both the British and U.S. media. The years that followed were prolific for West, as she produced a variety of journalism pieces for publications including the New Republic, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New Statesman, as well as notable works of nonfiction among them The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her epic examination of Yugoslavia’s political and artistic history, inspired by her extensive travels there in 1936–1938. During the Second World War, she investigated World War II traitors, and in the 1950s, her coverage of the Nuremberg Trials was first published as a series in the New Yorker and later reprinted as A Train of Powder.
She continued writing into the 1980s, her sharp tongue and critic’s eye unwavering even in her later years. Several of her works were published posthumously. West was honored with the title Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959.