Rebecca West

Although Rebecca West was once hailed “the world's number one woman's writer” by Time magazine, the diversity and generic indeterminacy of her writings make it difficult to assess her literary status. She is probably better known for the brilliance of her non-fiction – reportage, travel, history, biography, literary criticism – than for her sometimes over-intellectualized novels. Her distinction was to write about the factual world with formidable erudition, but also with an imaginative awareness of its ambiguities. Although West's range and versatility might suggest a protean literary personality, her writing voice was, at any time and in any genre, instantly recognisable, and her preoccupying myths remained largely the same th