REBECCA WEST, WRITER OF THE MONTH AT THE CAN VENTOSA LIBRARY

Each month, the Can Ventosa Library names a relevant figure in literature as a writer of the month. this october, Rebecca West has been the chosen author.

Rebecca West Biography

Rebecca West was born the year 1892 in London under the name Cecily Isabel Fairfield.

After moving to Edinburgh with his family, West began his studies. Nevertheless, had to abandon them when he fell ill with tuberculosis in 1907. Nevertheless, his intellectual restlessness continued and he continued with his training in a self-taught way.

After attending the Academy of Dramatic Arts, The writer began her career as a journalist at the suffrage seminary The Freewoman. Later, She continued her journalistic career and her socialist and feminist activism, collaborating with the Daily News y The Clarion, as well as with The New Yorker O Sunday Telegraph, entre otros. It was during that time when he decided to adopt his pseudonym in honor of the protagonist of the work. Rosmersholm they Henrik Ibsen.

On a personal level, He was associated with important literary figures of the time. He became friends with the writers Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing. She had a romantic relationship for ten years and a lifelong friendship with H. G. Wells, with whom he had a child. Later, married Henry Maxwell Andrews, who was widowed in 1968.

After years of poor health, Rebecca West died in 1983 at the age of ninety.

 

Rebecca West's literary career

West published his first work, Indissoluble Matrimony, en 1914. This appeared in the pages of the first issue of Blast magazine, in which other important writers of the time also participated. Four years later he published The return of the soldier, where he analyzes the effects of war on soldiers returning from the front at the end of the First World War. His next notable novel was The Judge in 1922, where she openly reflects her feminist ideas and deals with controversial issues at the time such as the circumstances of single mothers or rape..

Other important literary works are The Aubrey Family, Harriet Hume y The birds fall.

At an essay level, highlights white lamb, gray falcon, work of 1941 in which he criticizes Nazism and the situation in Yugoslavia. The meaning of betrayal is a compilation of reports written for The New Yorker. The latter deals with the issue of treason trials in Great Britain after the Second World War..

Political commitment

Rebecca West was a lifelong feminist and socialist activist, and he reflected those ideas in his works of fiction and essays.. He stood with the Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War. Además, participated in the creation of a support committee for Spanish women and children.

After the end of World War II, West was very critical of communism, and continued defending his political and social ideas.

 

The Can Ventosa Library has many of Rebecca West's works among its titles on loan.

 

By Maite Vallejo

 

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