Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987, hardcover, illustrated, index, 289 pages, previous owners name to endpaper otherwise condition:: as new.
Celebrated novelist, acerbic critic, and journalist without peer, friend and lover of the great and gifted, social and sexual rebel, observer of modern history's turning points, Rebecca West led one of the great lives of the twentieth century. In this first full-scale biography of Rebecca West, the widely admired biographer Victoria Glendinning captures that life in all its disturbing brilliance and haunting pain.
"It was about twenty years ago that I decided to move on from reading mostly trashy novels and became an autodidact in the field of literature. It was a good decision and set me on a fabulous adventure. Every now and then however, I would get in over my head and fall into the abyss of abysmal ignorance. Such has been my experience with Rebecca West. Possibly due to a new reissue in 2007 by Penguin Classics of her magnum opus, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, possibly due to my frustrated efforts to understand the Bosnian War, I obtained a copy of the book; the 1982 Penguin edition. I began to read and was defeated before I even made it through the 23 page Prologue. What I retained was a mysterious curiosity about the author. It was clear to me that here was a genius at work.
At last my eyes were opened. Yes, Rebecca West was a genius. She wrote prodigiously for her entire life: book reviews, journalism, novels, and non-fiction books on many topics. She made her living as a writer and a good living it was. She was the lover of H G Wells by whom she had son and suffered mightily in her attempts to raise the child while maintaining her career. She was the personification of the trap in which most creative and intelligent women of the 20th century lived.
Glendinning portrays Rebecca West as "both an agent for change and a victim of change. In a very early article, 'Things Men Never Know,' she described how girls were reproached for having weaker bodies, weaker brains, weaker wills, and weaker emotions than boys, but if a girl decided to put this right and to become strong and clever and brave, then she was told she had lost her 'real value' and that no one would love her." (Introduction, p xv.)
I began writing this review on January 9th, the birthday of Simone de Beauvoir. Rebecca West was born in December, 1892. For me it shakes out like this: Rebecca West could have been my grandmother; Simone de Beauvoir could have been my mother. Neither of them were quite mother material and neither have I been, but I am talking about a philosophical maternal lineage. It gives me great comfort to claim these women as ancestors of my mind. I am enriched, encouraged, and spurred on to make the most of what gifts they have bestowed upon me in the years remaining to me."
