Rebecca West
© Madame Yevonde
Rebecca West (1892-1983) was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield in County Kerry, Ireland, and raised in Edinburgh. A member of the socialist Fabian Society and a militant suffragist, in 1914 she bore a child out of wedlock with H.G. Wells, whom she met after panning his books. A fearsome critic, she also wrote novels, reportage, history, and political analysis. As a skeptic of the Russian Revolution who became a passionate anti-communist, West alienated many on both Left and Right; she was known all her life for her scathing wit and force of will.
Rebecca West
Foreword by Katie Roiphe
“West’s style . . . builds on the creative inventions of Shakespeare and Dickens and Dostoevsky and Henry James and D.H. Lawrence . . . West shows the indefatigability of a crack reporter in collecting details.” —Donald A. Stauffer, The New York Times
The gripping courtroom drama of a Brooklyn-born Englishman who became the voice of Nazi Germany, by “one of the most brilliant and erudite journalists of the century” (The New York Times).