Rebecca West Books In Order

The Fountain Overflows

The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father?s genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare. In The Fountain Overflows, a 1957 best seller, Rebecca West transmuted her own volatile childhood into enduring art. This is an unvarnished but affectionate picture of an extraordinary family, in which a remarkable stylist and powerful intelligence surveys the elusive boundaries of childhood and adulthood, freedom and dependency, the ordinary and the occult.

Cousin Rosamund

A feminist novel that reveals both the problems of marriage and the ecstasies of sexual love, completing the final chapters of the saga that began with THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS, and continued with THIS REAL NIGHT.

The Judge

Seventeen year old Ellan, a young woman deeply concerned with getting women the right to vote remember, this novel is set in 1918 has a passion for life and also for a young man named Richard. But Richard is the illegitimate son of a powerful and frustrated woman a woman whose history may be repeating itself…
. Rebecca West was a pseudonym for Cicily Isabel Fairfield, a woman who had love affairs with Charlie Chaplin, H.G. Wells, and businessman, politician, and newspaper magnate Max Beaverbrook. She published her first novel, The Return of the Soldier, in 1918. Her works also include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Survivors in Mexico, The Thinking Reed, The Fountain Overflows, and The Birds Fall Down. She may be best known for her studies of the Na*zi war crimes trials in Nuremberg: The Meaning of Treason 1947 and A Train of Powder 1955. In 1959 West was made a Dame of the British Empire.

The Return of the Soldier

Cicely changed to Cicily Isabel Fairfield 1892 1983, known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British born writer of Scottish Irish ancestry famous for her novels, journalism, literary criticism, and travel literature. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, she was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century as well as one of its greatest prose stylists. She 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. Her works include: Henry James 1916, The Return of the Soldier 1918, Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy 1929, The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels 1935, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon 1942, The New Meaning of Treason 1969.

The Sentinel

‘And when the suffragette went out by the door the stones began to come through the window.’ The descriptions of hunger striking and the force feeding of suffragettes in this, Rebecca West’s first and hitherto unknown novel, are among the most gripping in suffragette literature. But The Sentinel 1909 11 is equally compelling for its engagement with some of the major political, cultural and literary debates of the early twentieth century. Offering a sweeping panorama of English society, West covers issues ranging from contemporary concerns within the feminist movement feminism and socialism, female desire, sexuality and motherhood to Russian revolutionaries, popular culture and aesthetics. In her edition, Laing demonstrates why this flawed work offers an important historical and biographical document and a privileged insight into the emergence of the young Rebecca West as fiction writer and astute critic on the literary and political scene.

All Passion Spent / Return of the Soldier / Two Days in Aragon

Echoing the themes in A Room of One’s Own by her great friend Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville West remaps the destiny of the gentle, gracious eighty eight year old Lady Slane in this classic modern novel. Having surrendered seven decades of her life to the exemplary, if often hollow fulfillment of her marriage, to the expectations of her statesman husband and the demands of her children, Lady Slane finally, in her widowhood, defies her family. She dismisses the wishes and plans of her six pompous sons and daughters for her future, and instead retires to a tiny house in Hampstead, where she chooses to live independently and free from her past. There she alters, and not without some success, the course of her personal history. There, too, she recollects the dreams of her youth and at last, with one last ‘strange and lovely thing,’ acts upon the passion she forfeited seventy years earlier to the narrow conventions of a proper Victorian marriage. ‘…
Sackville West has borrowed in her prose writing some…
function of poetry, the ability to suggest far more than she says.’ New York Times ‘Witty and charming and graceful and brilliant.’ Chicago Tribune

Henry James

This is a pre 1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

First appearing in two volumes in 1942, this book was written as a result of the author’s three journeys to Yugoslavia: one in 1936, another in 1937 and finally, in the summer of 1938. At first, she thought it was folly to consider a book on such a subject and it seems that her publishers thought so too. But the book became a historical, archaeological and political analysis of the country, as well as a conversation and an account of folklore, prophecy, and a record of landscape. The book also includes the author’s views on religion, ethics, art, myth and gender. The book was completed as Yugoslavia was plunged into political turmoil, followed by invasion and four years of merciless civil and partisan warfare. It is being re published half a century later during equally critical times for the people of the Balkans. Rebecca West is the author of nonfiction works such as ‘The Meaning of Treason’ and ‘A Train of Powder’, and works of fiction including ‘The Thinking Reed’, ‘The Fountain Overflows’ and ‘The Birds Fall Down’.

The New Meaning of Treason

West’s gripping work of journalism now available as an ebook The bestselling chronicle of England s World War II traitors, expanded and updated for the Cold War era In The Meaning of Treason, Rebecca West tackled not only the history and facts behind the spate of World War II traitors, but the overriding social forces at work to challenge man s connection to his fatherland. As West reveals in this expanded edition, the ideologically driven amateurs of World War II were followed by the much more sinister professional spies for whom the Cold War era proved a lucrative playground and put Western safety at risk. Filled with real world intrigue and fascinating character studies, West s gripping narrative connects the war s treasonous acts with the rise of Communist spy rings in England and tackles the ongoing issue of identity in a complex world.

The Meaning of Treason

In her classic study of WWII, Dame Rebecca West interprets the impulse of treachery and betrayal. From the trials of William Joyce and John Amery, the renowned historian takes the reader from a London devastated by war into the inner world of ‘sufferings which overtake people who live unnaturally and cut the bonds which bind them to their own country.’

A Train of Powder

These accounts of four controversial trials explore the nature of crime and punishment, innocence and guilt, retribution and forgiveness.

The Young Rebecca

‘Some of West’s earliest writings devastatingly funny, fiercely feminist and socialist now have been rescued from obscurity and published with Jane Marcus’s excellent commentary in The Young Rebecca.’ St. Louis Post Dispatch’Thanks to Marcus’s arduous labor of selection, we have here a living, breathing evocation of the early feminist and socialist movements in England as recorded by a highly opinionated participant.’ Jessica Mitford’The Young Rebecca reflects West’s consuming interest in feminist and socialist issues. Quite apart from their technical excellence, these articles are remarkable because they were produced by a girl barely out of her teens, and because many of them read as if they were written last Tuesday.’ The Atlanta Journal’…
a fierce and funny scourge of establishment figures…
her prose sparkles…
‘ Book World, The Washington PostJane Marcus brings together some of Rebecca West’s early journalistic writings, collected here for the first time, which reveal West’s passionate responses to political and literary events as well as her experience in the suffrage campaign. Included are articles from The Freewoman, The Clarion, and the Daily News, among others.

Survivors in Mexico

Rebecca West’s never before published Survivors in Mexico brings to readers a daring and provocative work by a major twentieth century author. An exhilarating exploration of Mexican history, religion, art, and culture, it explores the inner lives of figures ranging from Cort s and Montezuma to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky.

Witty and entertaining, substantive and reflective, insightful and well documented, in splendid and uncommon prose, Rebecca West s travelogue…
is a model of British sophistication and knack for seeing the other. Jorge G. Casta eda, New York Times Book Review

An enthrallingly readable book…
full of sharp impressions and stimulating insights.
Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Luscious reading…
. The book succeeds beautifully as a travelogue thanks to West s intellect and experience, with Mexico serving as the vehicle for it all. Sam Quinones, Washington Post Book World

Rebecca West 1892 1983 wrote prolifically through most of the twentieth century. She is best known for her travel memoir/historical meditation on Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Bernard Schweizer is assistant professor of English at Long Island University Brooklyn. He is the author of Rebecca West: Heroism, Rebellion and the Female Epic and Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s.