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 - 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.
Not much need for me to write anything when someone else has got her quite that full and quite that succinctly. Or just some additional detail. That she trained as an actress at ADA (RADA now, but it didn't yet have the royal approval in her day); that she quit to become a journalist, writing for "The Freewoman" magazine from 1911, and for the weekly socialist newspaper "The Clarion"; that she joined the Fabian Society and became a close friend of George Bernard Shaw; that her ten-year love-affair with H.G Wells included mothering Anthony Panther West Fairfield
(the author Anthony West) - this before her marriage to Henry Andrews; that her home in the Chilterns provided such a safe refuge to many during WW2 that Hitler included her on a list of
journalists to be arrested when the invasion of Britain was achieved; that her reporting on the Nuremberg Trials was on behalf of the New Yorker; that she wrote countless literary reviews for all the main papers that took them; that she died on March 15 1983, now Dame Rebecca West; that you can find a chronological list of all her published books here.
Anthony Powell, novelist, began dancing to the music of time, today in 1905
Heinrich Theodor Böll, German novelist, born today in 1917
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 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 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".
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 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 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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