Cicily Isabel Fairfield (Rebecca West was her nom de
typewriter, Andrews her
married surname), born today in 1892: British author, journalist,
literary critic and travel writer
This from the Booker Prize website (she’s on their website because she was a judge in 1969 and 1970, the first two years of the competition, and in those days it was a "literary" not a "fiction" prize - I must look up who won in those 2 years)*:
Born in 1892, Rebecca West was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield and, in preparation for her role as a socialist feminist, took her adopted name from the spiky heroine in Henrik Ibsen’s play "Rosmersholm".
In 1947, Time magazine called West "indisputably the world’s number one woman writer" and she was equally distinguished as a novelist, literary critic, travel writer (becoming particularly associated with Yugoslavia), and as a journalist who covered the Nuremberg trials. West wrote about many of the great themes of the century - from communism to fascism, and from apartheid to feminism. She had a long relationship with H.G. Wells, and was an indefatigable socialiser.
The first Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, today in 1620
Phileas Fogg travelled rather further and considerably faster, completing his trip around the entire world in slightly less than 80 days, today in 1872, if you were reading it in serial form at the time, not until today in 1873, if you waited for the book (Jules Verne the author) to come out. And what about Passepartout, his valet - another name for my Sherpa Tenzing list (see July 24)
While today, in 1991, in fact not fiction though sometimes fact is harder to believe than fiction, today, in 1991, the leaders of Azerbaijan,
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine signed the protocol to an agreement that
made the formation of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) official.
Four days later, having achieved the principal goal of his Presidency, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev resigned, and that was it for the Soviet Union: over, done, disbanded, GER
The winner of the very first Booker Prize, in 1969, was P. H. Newby for his novel "Something to Answer For". W. L. Webb, The Guardian's Literary Editor, was chair of the inaugural set of judges, which included Stephen Spender, Frank Kermode and David Farrer alongside Rebecca West. The 1970 prize went to Bernice Rubens for her novel "The Elected Member".
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