Rebecca West (1) (1892–1983)
Autore di Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia
Per altri autori con il nome Rebecca West, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.
Sull'Autore
Taking her name from one of Henrik Ibsen's strong-minded women, Rebecca West was a politically and socially active feminist all her long life. She had an intense 10-year affair with H.G. Wells, with whom she had a son. A brilliant and versatile novelist, critic, essayist, and political commentator, mostra altro West's greatest literary achievement is perhaps her travel diary, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia (1942). Five years in the writing, it is the story of an Easter trip that she and her husband, British banker Henry Maxwell Andrews (whom she had married in 1930), made through Yugoslavia in 1937. A historical narrative with excellent reporting, it is essentially an analysis of Western culture. During World War II, she superintended British broadcast talks to Yugoslavia. Her remarkable reports of the treason trials of Lord Haw and John Amery appeared first in the New Yorker and are included with other stories about traitors in The Meaning of Treason (1947), which was expanded to deal with traitors and defectors since World War II as The New Meaning of Treason (1964). The Birds Fall Down (1966), which was a bestseller, is the story of a young Englishwoman caught in the grip of Russian terrorists. From a true story told to her more than half a century ago by the sister of Ford Madox Ford (who had heard it from her Russian husband), West "created a rich and instructive spy thriller, which contains an immense amount of brilliantly distributed information about the ideologies of the time, the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church, the conflicts of customs, belief, and temperament between Russians and Western Europeans, the techniques of espionage and counter-espionage, and the life of exiles in Paris" (New Yorker). Unlike that of her more famous contemporaries, her fiction is stylistically and structurally conventional, but it effectively details the evolution of daily life amid the backdrop of such historical disasters as the world wars. Her critical works include Arnold Bennett Himself, Henry James (1916), Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews, and The Court and the Castle (1957), a study of political and religious ideas in imaginative literature. In 1949, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: Rebecca West, 1912
Serie
Opere di Rebecca West
The Saga of the Century Trilogy: The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund (2010) 26 copie
The Return of the Soldier [1982 film] — Original book — 8 copie
War Nurse: The True Story of a Woman Who Lived, Loved and Suffered on the Western Front (1930) — Autore — 6 copie
A Letter to a Grandfather 5 copie
Indissoluble Matrimony 2 copie
English Biographies 1 copia
A Conversation on the Train 1 copia
Opera in Greenville 1 copia
Opere correlate
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women (2006) — Collaboratore — 1,093 copie
The New Yorker Book of War Pieces: London, 1939 to Hiroshima, 1945 (1947) — Collaboratore — 98 copie
Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul (2002) — Collaboratore — 25 copie
Agenda : Wyndham Lewis special issue — Collaboratore — 6 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- West, Rebecca
- Nome legale
- Fairfield, Cicely Isabel
- Altri nomi
- West, Rebecca
- Data di nascita
- 1892-12-21
- Data di morte
- 1983-03-15
- Luogo di sepoltura
- Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey, England
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di nascita
- London, England, UK
- Luogo di morte
- London, England, UK
- Luogo di residenza
- London, England, UK
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Ibston, Buckinghamshire, England, UK - Istruzione
- George Watson's Ladies College
Academy of Dramatic Art - Attività lavorative
- writer
author
novelist
Time and Tide (director) - Relazioni
- West, Anthony (son)
Wells, H. G. (lover)
Fairfield, Letitia (sister)
West, Henry Maxwell (husband) - Organizzazioni
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (Foreign Honorary ∙ Literature ∙ 1972)
Time and Tide - Premi e riconoscimenti
- Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature
Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1949)
Order of the British Empire (Dame Commander, 1959)
Women's Press Club Award for Journalism (1948)
Legion d'Honneur
Benson Medal (1966) - Breve biografia
- Rebecca West was the pen name of Cicily Isabel Andrews, née Fairfield, born in London, England (some sources say Kerry, Ireland), to an Anglo-Irish-Scottish family. She was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland but had to leave school at 16. She went to London to train as an actress, and took her pseudonym from her role in the Henrik Ibsen play Rosmersholm. She became a journalist around 1911, working first for the feminist publications Freewoman and the Clarion, in support of women's right to vote, and later contributing essays and reviews to The New Republic, The New York Herald Tribune, The Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, and many other national newspapers and magazines in the UK and USA. She was at times a foreign correspondent, and wrote social and cultural criticism, book reviews, travel writing, fiction, and nonfiction. In 1918, she published her first novel, The Return of the Soldier. Other works included The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), The Fountain Overflows (1957), and The Birds Fall Down (1966). After visiting Yugoslavia and the Balkans in 1937, she published the two-volume Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942). Her reports on the Nuremberg trials following World War II were collected in A Train of Powder (1955). West was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1959. She had a 10-year liaison with H.G. Wells that began in 1913 and produced a son, Anthony West. At age 37, in 1930, she married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker.
Utenti
Discussioni
February Read: Rebecca West in Virago Modern Classics (Marzo 2017)
Group Read, March 2016: Harriet Hume in 1001 Books to read before you die (Marzo 2016)
Rebecca West recommendations in Virago Modern Classics (Giugno 2013)
Recensioni
Liste
THE WAR ROOM (1)
Schwob Nederland (1)
Backlisted (1)
Women in War (1)
War Literature (1)
Short and Sweet (1)
Hidden Classics (1)
First Novels (1)
Spirituality (1)
Female Author (2)
1910s (1)
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 47
- Opere correlate
- 29
- Utenti
- 7,818
- Popolarità
- #3,114
- Voto
- 3.8
- Recensioni
- 190
- ISBN
- 335
- Lingue
- 9
- Preferito da
- 30
In realtà è impossibile non amare Harriet così come è impossibile non detestare quasi da subito Arnold, il suo amante.
La storia inizia nei primi anni '20 con la coppia di giovani innamorati, appassionati e determinati a farsi strada, ciascuno nel proprio campo, pur se poveri, senza mezzi e senza appoggi familiari. Harriet è una pianista e Arnold un aspirante politico. L'inizio del libro descrive una loro giornata perfetta: c'è talmente tanto amore tra loro che arrivano a poter leggere uno i pensieri dell'altro; in Harriet però questa facoltà raggiunge il parossismo (forse perché Arnold è da subito eccessivamente concentrato su se stesso) al punto tale sa separarli e uccidere la loro storia: lei legge i piani di lui, determinato a sgomitare per farsi strada nell'ambiente che ha scelto ma che sente ostile, in cui si sente inferiore ed è talmente determinato che sa che farà solo un matrimonio di interesse che lo possa portare a introdursi in quel mondo e Harriet sarà trattata come uno straccio vecchio
Si separano quindi e la storia diventa quella dell'ascesa di Arnold, si incontrano però casualmente ogni cinque anni, in concomitanza di eventi cruciali negli intrallazzi di Arnold e ogni volta Harriet metterà a nudo i suoi pensieri e ne trarrà fosche previsioni. Immancabilmente ogni volta lui ne è attratto, ma la disprezza e la respinge perché lei non si lascia scalfire dalla sua posizione di arricchito e arrivato e finisce per odiarla.
Il capitolo finale è una vera pena: potrebbe persino essere romantico da morire, ma decisamente non è nelle corde della West dare un simile taglio alle sue storie.
È un libro scomodo, che non fa sconti, non consente di rilassarsi o sognare ma obbliga in qualche modo a parteggiare.
È un libro di contrasti: io ci ho visto (e ho patito) essenzialmente quello tra i sessi, ma c'è anche altro.… (altro)