Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth[...]
Reflecting the voices of poets, soldiers, the families they left behind and their comrades who would never return, "The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry", previously published as "In Flanders Fields", is edited with an introduction by George Walter in "Penguin Classics". Unrivalled for its ran[...]
The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit's new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly ori[...]
Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, "Black Lamb and Grey Fa[...]
West's narrative takes on all of Mexican history, from the conquest by Spain and the Mexican Revolution, to the muralist movement, and explores the inner lives of such figures as Cortes, Montezuma, the Reclus brothers, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Dr. Atl and Leon Trotsky. Highlighting contradictions [...]
Rebecca West's never-before-published 'Survivors in Mexico' brings to readers a work by a major 20thh-century author. An exhilarating exploration of Mexican history, religion, art and culture, it explores the inner lives of figures ranging from Corres and Montezuma to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and L[...]
'I had never met anything like her before', H.G. Wells wrote of meeting Rebecca West in 1913, 'and I doubt if there ever was anything like her before'. Born Cicily Fairfield, West renamed herself after the character she had once played in Ibsen's "Rosmersholm". Her ten-year affair with H.G. Wells yi[...]
Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West's haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the dev[...]
Rebecca West was a leading figure in the twentieth century literary scene. A passionate suffragist, socialist, fiercely intelligent, Rebecca West began her career as a writer with articles in "The Freewoman" and "The Clarion." Her first book, a biography of Henry James, was published when she was on[...]
Suitable for those attempting to understand the enigmatic history of the Balkan states, and the continuing friction in this fractured area of Europe.[...]
'Of all the women he had ever known she was the most ethereal. Loving her was like swathing oneself with a long scarf of spirit.' Harriet Hume, musical, mystical and whimsical, is the very essence of femininity- both princess and trollop. Her beautiful room in a dilapidated Kensington House is the s[...]
Rose Aubrey is one of a family of four children. Their father, Piers, is the disgraced son of an Irish landowning family, a violent, noble and quite unscrupulous leader of popular causes. His Scottish wife, Clare, is an artist, a tower of strength, fanatically devoted to a musical future for her d[...]
This collection of essays provides a comprehensive account of the culture of modern Italy. Contributions focus on a wide range of political, historical and cultural questions. The volume provides information and analysis on such topics as regionalism, the growth of a national language, social and p[...]
A powerful exposition of the strange necessity of artistic endeavour -- and its limitations, the struggle of light against darkness, good against evil, played out against the coming of the First World War[...]
Rich in period detail, lyrical in its evocation of the Thames, a novel that reveals both the problems of marriage and the ecstasies of sexual love[...]