54 Facts About Rebecca West

Dame Cecily Isabel Fairfield, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer.

An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman.

Rebecca West was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959; in each case, the citation reads: "writer and literary critic".

Rebecca West took the pseudonym "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen.

Rebecca West was born Cecily Isabel Fairfield in 1892 in London, England, and grew up in a home full of intellectual stimulation, political debate, lively company, books and music.

Rebecca West's mother, Isabella, a Scotswoman, was an accomplished pianist but did not pursue a musical career after her marriage to Charles Fairfield.

Rebecca West deserted his family when Cecily was eight years old.

Rebecca West never rejoined them, and died impoverished and alone in a boarding house in Liverpool in 1906, when Cecily was 14.

Rebecca West had to leave school in 1907 due to a bout of tuberculosis.

Rebecca West chose not to return after recovering from the illness, later describing her schooling at Watson's as akin to a "prison".

Meanwhile, Rebecca West worked as a journalist for the feminist weekly Freewoman and the Clarion, drumming up support for the suffragette cause.

Rebecca West is said to have had relationships with Charlie Chaplin, newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, and journalist John Gunther.

Rebecca 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.

Rebecca West was a great friend of the novelist G B Stern, and Stern and Clemence Dane stayed with her in America in 1924.

Rebecca West's writing brought her considerable wealth, and, by 1940, she owned a Rolls-Royce and a grand country estate, Ibstone House, in the Chiltern Hills of southern England.

Rebecca West's non-fiction masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is an amalgamation of her impressions from these trips.

Rebecca 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.

Rebecca West 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.

Rebecca West accidentally misidentified a South African judge 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.

Rebecca West stayed with actor Romney Brent in Mexico City and with Katherine Wright, a long-time friend, in Cuernavaca.

Rebecca West's husband became both sleepy and inattentive as he got older.

Rebecca West 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.

Rebecca 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 Rebecca West had the upsetting problem of Larsen's request to be among the mourners, even though she had only known him for 18 months.

Rebecca West spent time with scholars such as Jane Marcus and Bonnie Kime Scott, who began to chronicle her feminist career and varied work.

Rebecca West wrote at an unabated pace, penning masterful reviews for The Sunday Telegraph, publishing her last novel The Birds Fall Down, and overseeing the film version of the story by BBC in 1978.

Rebecca West tinkered at great length with an autobiography, without coming to closure, and started scores of stories without finishing them.

Rebecca 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 Rebecca West's alter ego in Heritage as a deceitful, unloving actress and poor caregiver so wounded Rebecca West that she broke off relations with her son and threatened to sue any publisher who would bring out Heritage in England.

Rebecca West suppressed an English edition of the novel, which was only published there after her death, in 1984.

Rebecca West suffered from failing eyesight and high blood pressure in the late 1970s, and became increasingly frail.

Rebecca West died on 15 March 1983, and is buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking.

Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature.

Rebecca West is honoured with a blue plaque at Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, her childhood home which provided the setting for her novel The Judge.

Rebecca West grew up in a home filled with discussions of world affairs.

Rebecca West's father was a journalist who often involved himself in controversial issues.

Rebecca West brought home Russian revolutionaries and other political activists, and their debates helped to form West's sensibility, which took shape in novels such as The Birds Fall Down, set in pre-revolution Russia.

The impressionable Rebecca West learned early on just how powerful was the will to persecute minorities and to subject individuals to unreasonable suspicion based on flimsy evidence and mass frenzy.

Rebecca West regarded herself as a member of the left, having attended Fabian socialist summer schools as a girl.

Rebecca West paid a heavy price for her cool reaction to the Russian Revolution; her positions increasingly isolated her.

When Emma Goldman visited Britain in 1924 after seeing Bolshevik violence firsthand, Rebecca West was exasperated that British intellectuals ignored Goldman's testimony and her warning against Bolshevik tyranny.

Rebecca West was appalled at the failure of Western democracies to come to the aid of Republican Spain, and she gave money to the Republican cause.

Rebecca West was outraged when the Allies switched their loyalties as to Yugoslav resistance movements by deciding in 1943 to start backing the Communist-led Partisans led by Tito in Yugoslavia, thus abandoning their support of Draza Mihailovic's Chetniks, whom she considered the legitimate Yugoslav resistance.

Rebecca West expressed her feelings and opinions on the Allies' switch in Yugoslavia by writing the satirical short story titled "Madame Sara's Magic Crystal", but decided not to publish it upon discussion with Orme Sargent, Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office.

Rebecca West saw an oaf blundering into the minefield of Communist subversion.

In postwar Britain, Rebecca West voted Labour and welcomed the Labour landslide of 1945 but spoke out against domination of the Labour Party by British trade unions, and thought left-wing politicians such as Michael Foot unimpressive.

Rebecca West admired Margaret Thatcher, not for Thatcher's policies, but for Thatcher's achievement in rising to the top of a male-dominated sphere.

Communists were under party discipline, and therefore could never speak for themselves; Rebecca West was a supreme example of an intellectual who spoke for herself, no matter how her comments might injure her.

Rebecca West's parents had her baptised into the Church of England two months after birth and she considered herself a Christian, though an unconventional believer.

Rebecca West's contribution to Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Letters Series, Letter to a Grandfather, is a declaration of "my faith, which seems to some unfaith" disguised as philosophical fiction.

Rebecca West's characteristically heroic personal and historic vision is a result of these two contending forces.

Bill Moyers's interview "A Visit With Dame Rebecca West," recorded in her London home when she was 89, was aired by PBS in July 1981.

That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers, by Carl Rollyson, Helen Macleod, and Anne Bobby, is a one-woman monologue in which an actress playing Rebecca West recounts her life through some of her most famous articles, letters, and books.

Tosca's Kiss, a 2006 play by Kenneth Jupp, retells Rebecca West's experience covering the Nuremberg trials for The New Yorker.