by Gail Toms
PP presentation and handout accompany this presentation.
Abstract.
Indissoluble Woman: Contextualising the Early Journalism and Shorter Fiction of Rebecca West more
Abstract.
Indissoluble Woman: Contextualising the Early Journalism and Shorter Fiction of Rebecca West
Rebecca West’s work evades definition, eliding most of the literary taxonomies of the early twentieth century. She made her writing debut in 1911, when she was appointed as a contributor and literary editor to Dora Marsden’s highly controversial feminist periodical known as The Freewoman at the young age of eighteen. Between the years 1911 and 1914, she proved herself a prolific journalist contributing regularly to reviews, articles, discussion and editorial of both countercultural publications such as the New Freewoman and mass culture mainstream presses, such as The Clarion and The Daily Herald. She was instrumental in the introduction of Imagism to Britain, writing an influential article on the Imagist movement, and introducing the poet Ezra Pound to Marsden’s magazine. West’s reviewing skills earned her the accolade from George Bernard Shaw that ‘she could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could, and much more savagely.’ In 1914, a short story by Rebecca West, called ‘Indissoluble Matrimony’ appeared in another highly controversial publication; Wyndham Lewis’ avant-garde ‘masculinist’ art review Blast. It was the only contribution by a woman and a self-declared non-vorticist. This paper will review the diversity of Rebecca West’s early writing and her contribution to the contemporaneous gender discourses of the early 1910s, paying particular attention to her predilection for ‘individualism’ over ‘feminism’.
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