The Voice of Rebecca West

The young Rebecca West was a marvel. Born as Cicily Isabel Fairfield in 1892, she became a journalist in her youth for socialist and feminist publications. She wrote with verve, humor, and energy; she was a wicked polemicist; she didn’t hesitate to attack stuffed shirts on the left as well as those on the right. She wasn’t yet in, say, 1912, the famous writer she would later become, but she was writing then with a sharpness of thought and phrase she would never surpass.

We print here two essays she wrote for the socialist publication The Clarion in 1912: they are as fresh, I think, as if they had been written yesterday, indeed, a good deal fresher than some things that were written yesterday. We are grateful...