Rebecca West (Cicely Isabel Fairfield) (1892-1983) was born in London and grew up in an intellectual home. Her mother was a pianist and her father, a journalist, abandoned his family when West was only eight years old, after which they moved to Scotland. She was a woman of many trades early on; she studied as an actress, started working as a journalist in 1912 at The Freewoman, and was active in the woman’s suffrage movement.  In her writing as a journalist, West wrote essays and reviews for publications like New York Herald Tribune, The Daily Telegraph, The New Republic and New York American. After writing a scathing review for H.G. Wells’, Marriage, they met and had a ten year long affair, during which they had a son.

She loved the travel and it became a large part of her writing, as well as politics. Traveling to countries such as Mexico, Yugoslavia and South Africa influenced her works, especially Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and A Train of Powder. Although she worked on her books, she continued to write and take assignments from newspapers and magazines. West’s writing won her the Women’s Press Club Award for Journalism in 1948 in the United States, one of many visits to the country. In 1982, her first novel, Return of the Soldier was made into major film.

Major works

• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
• The Judge
• The Fountain Overflows
• A Train of Powder
• The Return of the Soldier

Biographies about Rebecca West

• Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson by Susan Hertog
• Rebecca West by Victoria Glendinning

More Information

• Rebecca West on Wikipedia
• The International Rebecca West Society
• Selected Letters of Rebecca West 

Visit

• Rebecca West Papers - McFarlin Library at The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK
• Rebecca West Collection of Papers 1916-1975 - The New York Public Library, New York, NY
• Rebecca West Papers - Yale University Library, New Haven, CT

Rebecca West Quotes

“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and their audience.”

“Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.”

“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.”

“I write books to find out about things.”

“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”

“In these pages your imaginations, your desires, your passions are given life; Thoughts take shape that turn into dreams and our aspirations all start with a dream. Reading is where those dreams really can come true over and over again.”

“Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person’s mind.”