Rebecca West, Writer

• ]Born: 21 December 1892


• Birthplace: London, England


• Died: 15 March 1983


• Best Known As: Critic, journalist, novelist and literary celebrity

Name at birth: Cicily Isabel Fairfield

Rebecca West published her first novel in 1918, The Return of the Soldier. She is perhaps best known for her journalistic studies of the Nazi 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, and in the late 1970s she gained new popularity, thanks largely to the feminist movement.

West famously had love affairs with movie star Charlie Chaplin, author H.G. Wells and businessman and politician Lord Beaverbrook (William Aitken).

Dame Rebecca West

(born Dec. 21, 1892, London, Eng. — died March 15, 1983, London) British journalist, novelist, and critic. Trained as an actress, from 1911 West contributed to the left-wing press and made a name as a fighter for woman suffrage. She had a 10-year love affair (1913 – 23) with the novelist H.G. Wells. Her novels, including The Judge (1922), The Thinking Reed (1936), and The Birds Fall Down (1966), attracted less attention than her social and cultural writings. Her admired reports on the Nürnberg trials were collected in A Train of Powder (1955). Her history of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942), is regarded as one of the century’s finest nonfiction works. In 1946 she reported on the trial for treason of William Joyce, articles that were later published as The Meaning of Treason (1949).