Editing Rebecca West (section)

==Biography==

Rebecca West was born Cecily Isabel Fairfield<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rebecca-West ''Encyclopedia Britannica''], 17 December 2018</ref> in 1892 in London, England, and grew up in a home full of intellectual stimulation, political debate, lively company, books and music.<ref name="Glendinning">{{harvnb|Glendinning|1987|p=9}}</ref> Her mother, Isabella, a Scotswoman, was an accomplished pianist but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage to Charles Fairfield. The [[Anglo-Irish]] Charles had been a [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] stretcher-bearer at the [[siege of Richmond]] in the [[US Civil War]],<ref name=Treason-Review>
{{cite magazine
| first = Whittaker
| last = Chambers
| author-link = Whittaker Chambers
| title = Circles of Perdition: The Meaning of Treason
| magazine = Time
| url = https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,934181,00.html
| date = 8 December 1947
| access-date = 26 March 2017}}</ref> and had returned to the UK to become a journalist of considerable reputation but financial incompetence. He deserted his family when Cecily was eight years old. He never rejoined them, and died impoverished and alone in a boarding house in [[Liverpool]] in 1906, when Cecily was 14.<ref>{{harvnb|Glendinning|1987|pp=21–22}}</ref> The rest of the family moved to [[Edinburgh]], Scotland, where Cecily was educated at [[George Watson's Ladies College]]. She had to leave school in 1907 due to a bout of [[tuberculosis]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|p=29}}</ref> She chose not to return after recovering from the illness, later describing her schooling at Watson's as akin to a "prison".<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=West |first=Rebecca |date=22 January 1916 |title=The World's Worst Failure |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/113043/rebecca-west-worlds-worst-failure-female-education |magazine=The New Republic }}</ref>

West had two older sisters. [[Letitia Fairfield|Letitia]] ("Lettie"), who was the best educated of the three, became one of the first fully qualified female doctors in Britain, as well as a [[barrister]] at the [[Inns of Court]]. Winifred ("Winnie"), the middle sister, married Norman Macleod, Principal Assistant Secretary in the [[British Admiralty|Admiralty]], and eventually director general of Greenwich Hospital. Winnie's two children, Alison and Norman, became closely involved in Rebecca's life as she got older;<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|pp=418–27}}</ref> Alison Macleod would achieve a literary career of her own.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/04012101.html |title=Archives Hub |publisher=Archives Hub |access-date=4 April 2012}}</ref> West trained as an actress in London, taking the name "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in ''[[Rosmersholm]]'' by [[Henrik Ibsen]].<ref name=Treason-Review /> She and Lettie became involved in the [[Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom|women's suffrage movement]], participating in street protests. Meanwhile, West worked as a journalist for the feminist weekly ''[[Freewoman]]'' and the ''[[The Clarion (British newspaper)|Clarion]]'', drumming up support for the suffragette cause.<ref name="Treason-Review"/>

===Affairs and motherhood===
In September 1912, West accused the famously libertine writer [[H. G. Wells]] of being "the Old Maid among novelists." This was part of a provocative review of his novel ''[[Marriage (novel)|Marriage]]'' published in ''Freewoman'',<ref>{{Cite journal |last=West |first=Rebecca |date=19 September 1912 |title=Marriage |url=https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:518928/PDF/ |journal=The Freewoman a Weekly Humanist Review |volume=2 |issue=44 |pages=346–348 |via=Modernist Journals Project}}</ref> an obscure and short-lived feminist weekly review. The review attracted Wells's interest and an invitation to lunch at his home. The two writers became lovers in late 1913, despite Wells being both married and twenty-six years older than West.<ref>Ray, Gordon N. ''H.G. Wells & Rebecca West'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 1–32</ref> Their 10-year relationship produced a son, [[Anthony West (author)|Anthony West]], born on 4 August 1914. Wells was behind her move to Marine Parade, [[Leigh-on-Sea]] in Essex, where she lived between 1917 and 1919.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Howeson |first1=Louise |title=The house in Leigh where Dame Rebecca West lived with HG Wells' love child |url=https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/23098897.house-leigh-dame-rebecca-west-lived-hg-wells-love-child/ |website=Eastern Daily Press |date=5 November 2022 |access-date=7 November 2022}}</ref><ref>Gibb, Lorna ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bd4-AwAAQBAJ&dq=%22rebecca+west%22+%22leigh+on+sea%22&pg=PA66 The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West]'' (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2014), pp. 66, 70</ref> Their friendship lasted until Wells's death in 1946.

West is also said to have had relationships with [[Charlie Chaplin]], newspaper magnate [[Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook|Lord Beaverbrook]],<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|pp=100, 115}}</ref> and journalist [[John Gunther]].<ref name="schlesinger199704">{{Cite magazine |last=Schlesinger |first=Arthur Jr. |date=April 1997 |title=A Man From Mars |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/04/a-man-from-mars/376839/ |magazine=The Atlantic  |pages=113–118}}</ref>

===Early career and marriage===
West established her reputation as a spokeswoman for feminist and socialist causes and as a critic, turning out essays and reviews for ''[[The New Republic]]'', ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'', ''[[New York American]]'', ''[[New Statesman]]'', ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', and many more newspapers and magazines. [[George Bernard Shaw]] said in 1916 that "Rebecca West could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely."<ref name="autogenerated1983">Linda Charlton, "Dame Rebecca West Dies in London, ''The New York Times'', 16 March 1983.</ref> During the 1920s, West began a lifelong habit of visits to the United States to give lectures, meet artists, and get involved in the political scene. She was a great friend of the novelist [[G. B. Stern]], and Stern and [[Clemence Dane]] stayed with her in America in 1924.<ref>''Nottingham Evening Post'', 4 August 1924, p.3.</ref> There, she befriended [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] founder [[Allen Dulles]], [[Charlie Chaplin]], [[Harold Ross]] of ''[[The New Yorker]]'', and historian [[Arthur Schlesinger Jr.]], among many other significant figures of the day. Her lifelong fascination with the United States culminated in 1948 when [[Harry S. Truman|President Truman]] presented her with the Women's Press Club Award for Journalism, calling her "the world's best reporter."<ref name="autogenerated1983"/>

In 1930, at the age of 37, she married a banker, Henry Maxwell Andrews, and they remained nominally together, despite one public affair just before his death in 1968.<ref name=gibb/> West's writing brought her considerable wealth, and, by 1940, she owned a [[Rolls-Royce (car)|Rolls-Royce]] and a grand country estate, Ibstone House, in the [[Chiltern Hills]] of southern England. During [[World War II]], West housed Yugoslav refugees in the spare rooms of her blacked-out manor, and she used the grounds as a small dairy farm and vegetable plot, agricultural pursuits that continued long after the war had ended.

===Later life===

As West grew older, she turned to broader political and social issues, including mankind's propensity to inflict violent injustice on itself. Before and during World War II, West travelled widely, collecting material for books on travel and politics. In 1936–38, she made three trips to [[Yugoslavia]], a country she came to love, seeing it as the nexus of European history since the late Middle Ages. Her non-fiction masterpiece, ''Black Lamb and Grey Falcon'' is an amalgamation of her impressions from these trips. ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'' reviewer Katherine Woods wrote: "In two almost incredibly full-packed volumes one of the most gifted and searching of modern English novelists and critics has produced not only the magnification and intensification of the travel book form, but, one may say, its apotheosis."

West was assigned by Ross' magazine to cover the [[Nuremberg trials]] for ''The New Yorker'', an experience she memorialized in the book ''A Train of Powder''. In 1950, she was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter W|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterW.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=29 July 2014}}</ref> She also went to South Africa in 1960 to report on [[apartheid]] in a series of articles for ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', particularly regarding a prominent trial for a seditious uprising aiming to establish Communist rule.

She accidentally misidentified a South African judge<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/br/0004/prose.html|title=Lingua Franca Book Review|website=linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org}}</ref> for some questions put by another judge and was sued for libel along with the ''Sunday Times'' whose editor, Harry Hodson, failed to support West.<ref name="newenglishreview.org">{{Cite web|url=https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?sec_id=190622|title=Rebecca West and the Flowers of Evil|website=www.newenglishreview.org}}</ref> She wrote "My problem is complicated by the fact that the defence, the people who would naturally be against the Judge and for me, are mostly Communist and won't lift a finger for me. It worries me a lot. It's so hard to work with this hanging over me." She felt her only support was her friends, the anti-apartheid politician [[Bernard Friedman]] and his wife, with whom she stayed in Johannesburg. "I will get over this case. But it isn't easy to feel that some people are for no reason that you know of possessed by an intention to ruin you; and I also felt I was letting you down in South Africa. I have been deeply grateful for all the kindness and sympathy you have shown me and I thought of Tall Trees as a warm place in a chilly world."<ref name="newenglishreview.org"/>

She travelled extensively well into old age. In 1966 and 1969, she undertook two long journeys to [[Mexico]], becoming fascinated by the indigenous culture of the country and [[Mestizos in Mexico|its mestizo population]]. She stayed with actor [[Romney Brent]] in [[Mexico City]] and with Katherine (Kit) Wright, a long-time friend, in [[Cuernavaca]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|pp=353–9}}</ref>

===Old age===

Her husband became both sleepy and inattentive as he got older. The sleepiness led to a car accident where no one was hurt but Henry was charged with dangerous driving. He became obsessed with the Norwegian ballerina [[Gerd Larsen]]; he would refuse to travel with West, instead preferring to return to London to be with Larsen. West initially considered this to be purely her husband's infatuation, but came to think that Larsen was driven by money. At her husband's funeral West had the upsetting problem of Larsen's request to be among the mourners, even though she had only known him for 18 months. Henry's will left £5,000 for Larsen.<ref name=gibb>{{cite book|last=Gibb|first=Lorna|title=West's World: The Life and Times of Rebecca West|year=2013|publisher=Macmillan|location=London|isbn=978-0230771499|page=contents|url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0230771491}}</ref> After her husband's death in 1968, West discovered that he had been unfaithful with other women.<ref name=gibb/>

After she was widowed, she moved to London, where she bought a spacious apartment overlooking [[Hyde Park, London|Hyde Park]]. Unfortunately, it was next door to the Iranian embassy. During the [[Iranian Embassy Siege|May 1980 incident]], West, then 87, had to be evacuated.<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|pp=413–4}}</ref> In the last two decades of her life, West kept up a very active social life, making friends with [[Martha Gellhorn]], [[Doris Lessing]], [[Bernard Levin]], comedian [[Frankie Howerd]], and film star and director [[Warren Beatty]], who filmed her for the production ''[[Reds (film)|Reds]]'', a biography of journalist [[John Reed (journalist)|John Reed]] and his connection with the [[Russian Revolution (1917)|Russian Revolution]]. She also spent time with scholars such as [[Jane Marcus]] and Bonnie Kime Scott, who began to chronicle her feminist career and varied work.<ref>Jane Marcus, ''The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911–17'', Indiana University Press, 1982, p. x; Bonnie Kime Scott, ''Refiguring Modernism'' (Vol. 1), Indiana University Press, 1995, p. xli.</ref> She wrote at an unabated pace, penning masterful reviews for ''[[The Sunday Telegraph]]'', publishing her last novel ''The Birds Fall Down'' (1966), and overseeing the film version of the story by [[BBC]] in 1978. The last work published in her lifetime was ''1900'' (1982). ''1900'' explored the last year of [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria]]'s long reign, which was a watershed in many cultural and political respects.

At the same time, West worked on sequels to her autobiographically inspired novel ''The Fountain Overflows'' (1957); although she had written the equivalent of two more novels for the planned trilogy, she was never satisfied with the sequels and did not publish them. She also tinkered at great length with an autobiography, without coming to closure, and started scores of stories without finishing them. Much of her work from the late phase of her life was published posthumously, including ''Family Memories'' (1987), ''This Real Night'' (1984), ''Cousin Rosamund'' (1985), ''The Only Poet'' (1992), and ''Survivors in Mexico'' (2003). Unfinished works from her early period, notably ''Sunflower'' (1986) and ''The Sentinel'' (2001) were also published after her death, so that her ''oeuvre'' was augmented by about one third by posthumous publications.

===Relationship with her son===

West's relationship with her son, [[Anthony West (author)|Anthony West]], was not a happy one. The rancour between them came to a head when Anthony, himself a gifted writer, his father's biographer (''H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life'' [1984]), and a novelist, published ''Heritage'' (1955), a fictionalised autobiography. West never forgave her son for depicting in ''Heritage'' the relationship between an illegitimate son and his two world-famous, unmarried parents, and for portraying the mother in unflattering terms. The depiction of West's alter ego in ''Heritage'' as a deceitful, unloving actress (West had trained as an actress in her youth) and poor caregiver so wounded West that she broke off relations with her son and threatened to sue any publisher who would bring out ''Heritage'' in England. She suppressed an English edition of the novel, which was only published there after her death, in 1984. Although there were temporary rapprochements between her and Anthony, a state of alienation persisted between them, causing West grief until her dying hour. She fretted about her son's absence from her deathbed, but when asked whether he should be sent for, answered: "perhaps not, if he hates me so much."<ref name="Rollyson 1996 427">{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|p=427}}</ref>

===Death===

[[File:Rebecca West Grave Brookwood.jpg|thumb|right|West's grave in [[Brookwood Cemetery]]]]

West suffered from failing eyesight and high blood pressure in the late 1970s, and became increasingly frail. Her last months were mostly spent in bed, at times delirious and other times lucid; she complained that she was dying too slowly.<ref name="Rollyson 1996 427"/> She died on 15 March 1983, and is buried at [[Brookwood Cemetery]], [[Woking]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Rebecca West |work=Necropolis Notables |publisher=The Brookwood Cemetery Society |url=http://www.tbcs.org.uk/rebecca_west.htm |access-date=23 February 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611062216/http://www.tbcs.org.uk/rebecca_west.htm |archive-date=11 June 2011  }}</ref>

Upon hearing of her death, [[William Shawn]], then editor in chief of ''The New Yorker'', said:
{{blockquote|Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature. No one in this century wrote more dazzling prose, or had more wit, or looked at the intricacies of human character and the ways of the world more intelligently.<ref name="autogenerated1983"/>}}

She is honoured with a [[blue plaque]] at Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, her childhood home which also provided the setting for her novel ''The Judge''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Six Scotswomen 'overlooked' by history to be honoured |url=https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/six-scotswomen-overlooked-history-be-honoured-2001943 |website=The Scotsman |date=27 February 2020 |access-date=28 April 2020}}</ref>