West, Rebecca (1892-1983)

English journalist and novelist, an active feminist from 1911. Her novels, of which the semi-autobiographical The Fountain Overflows (1956) and The Birds Fall Down (1966) are regarded as the best, demonstrate a social and political awareness.

The Meaning of Treason (1947) was reissued as The New Meaning of Treason in 1964, which included material on the spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

Rebecca West had a close relationship with H G Wells; their son, Anthony West, was born in 1914. After writing as a journalist, her first book was a study of the novelist Henry James (1916). Among her novels are The Return of the Soldier (1918), The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), and The Thinking Reed (1936). She was made a DBE in 1959.

She was born in London, studied at a London dramatic academy, and was an actor for a short time. She took the name Rebecca West from the heroine of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, one of the parts she had played. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) is a study of Yugoslavia.