Rebecca West
1892-1983
Journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer who had ties to Feminism, Suffragism and Socialism and covered war news during WWI. She published literary criticism, biographies, fiction, travel writing, and numerous book reviews during her prolific and multifaceted career.
Major works
- The Return of the Soldier (1918)
- St. Augustine (1933)
- The Fountain Overflows (1956)
- The Sentinel (Published posthumously in 2002)
Known associates
- Dora Marsden
- Henry Maxwell Andrews (husband)
- Charlie Chaplin
- Allen Dulles (founder of CIA)
- Harold Ross
- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
- H.G. Wells (with whom she had a son, Anthony West)
Further reading
- Reading Modernism’s Cultural Field: Rebecca West’s “The Strange Necessity” and the Aesthetic “System of Relations”(Laura Heffernan, published in “Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature,” vol. 27, 2008.)
- This article touches specifically on West’s ties to modernism and her reaction to other Modernist writers such as James Joyce as exemplified by her own literary criticism of these prominent figures.
- Rebecca West Today: Contemporary Critical Approaches (Bernard Schweizer, editor, Newark : University of Delaware Press, c2006)
- This book responds to a greater interest in studying Rebecca West in the 21st century after the collection and anthologizing of many of her works (journalism included) and through the lens of current thinking in women’s studies. The compiled essays cover “historical analyses, gender studies, issues in aesthetics and textuality, and philosophical approaches.”
Primary sources
Rebecca West’s papers are held at the Department of Special Collections and University Archives of the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. The extent of their collection is outlined here.
Modernista Research Guide 