EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF REBECCA WEST

Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield, better known as Rebecca West, was a passionate suffragist, socialist, a fiercely intelligent writer and thinker who began her career with articles in The Freewoman and The Clarion. Her first book, a biography of Henry James, was published when she was only twenty-four and her first novel followed just two years later. She had a notorious affair with H.G. Wells, and their illegitimate son, Anthony, was born at the beginning of the First World War. Author of several novels, West is perhaps best remembered for her classic account of pre-war Yugoslavia, Black Lamb, Grey Falcon (published by Macmillan in 1941 and as relevant today as it was sixty years ago), and for her coverage of the Nuremberg Trials. When she died in 1983 at the age of 90, William Shawn of The New Yorker said: "Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature. No one in this century wrote more dazzling prose, or had more wit, or looked at the intricacies of human character and the ways of the world more intelligently." Lorna Gibb's vivid and insightful biography affords a dazzling insight into her life and work. "It's especially impressive that Gibb manages to chronicle West's often complicated life in an even-handed, coherent way. Fast-paced and well-researched, this is a fine biography of a writer whose life and career was full of fascinating contradictions and intersections." - NPR Books. "It presents with discerning succinctness, a sharply etched portrait of a true original... Cissie Fairfield remained alive and well inside her alter ego, to judge from Lorna Gibb's brisk and affectionate biography." - The Sunday Times. "This riveting book is not a typical literary biography... Lorna Gibb may have read all of Rebecca West's vast output, but she does not flaunt it... Miss Gibb wisely leaves it to others to appraise her subject as a writer. What she does is to tell a gripping story of a woman's life." - Country Life. Paperback, 320 pages. Illustrated.