To write about Rebecca West is to deal in larger and larger uncertainties—uncertainties, often enough, that are taken for the currency of fact and truth. Despite the claims of a few critics with special interests, the verdict of literary history has yet to be reached on a sprawling body of work full of unexpected twists and turns—from St. Augustine and Proust to England’s wartime incubus, Lord Haw-Haw; from best-selling fiction to wide-ranging lectures at prestigious universities. Rebecca West was always taking the world, and perhaps even herself, by surprise, venturing into new territory (Yugoslavia, the Nuremberg trials, a South Carolina courtroom), mixing modes and genres—and no doubt “memory and desire” as well. It was an astonishing career for the mere chit of a girl—barely nineteen—whose clever sallies first appeared in the feminist Freewoman and the socialist Clarion in...

 

A Message from the Editors

Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.

Popular Right Now