West, Rebecca (1892-1983), was a British novelist and literary critic and one of the greatest journalists of the 1900’s. West analyzed the political and psychological reasons why people betray their countries in The Meaning of Treason (1947, revised as The New Meaning of Treason, 1964) and A Train of Powder (1955). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) is a penetrating study of the political history of Yugoslavia and other Balkan lands. Survivors in Mexico (published in 2003, after West’s death) is an extended essay on Mexican history and society.
West’s first book of literary criticism, Henry James (1916), describes the importance of James in shaping the modern novel. Her antiwar novel The Return of the Soldier (1918) shows James’s influence in its emphasis on the psychological motives behind the characters’ actions. The powerful novel The Judge (1922) is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the struggle for women’s right to vote. West’s autobiographical novel The Fountain Overflows (1956) was followed by two sequels published after her death: This Real Night (1984) and the unfinished Cousin Rosamund (1985). Another novel published after her death, Sunflower (1986), describes her relationships with author H. G. Wells and newspaper tycoon Lord Beaverbrook.
West was born on Dec. 21, 1892, in London. Her given and family name was Cicely Isabel Fairfield. She became interested in women’s rights and took the pen name Rebecca West from the strong-willed heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s drama Rosmersholm. Queen Elizabeth II made West a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire in 1959, and the writer became known as Dame Rebecca West. She died on March 15, 1983.
