West was born Cicely Isabel Fairfield on December 21, 1892 in London, to Charles and Isabella Fairfield.
The family moved to 21 Streatham Place before Cecily was two years old, and she later reimagined the house in her novel The Fountain Overflows.
Novelist, journalist, critic, and feminist, Dame Rebecca West (1892-1983) is considered one of the finest prose writers in twentieth-century England.
She wrote under the penname Rebecca West. She has since become legendary, not only as an outspoken feminist and mistress of H.G. Wells, but also as the prolific author of novels like The Return of the Soldier, which helped to define an era. By mid-career in 1947, West was featured on the cover of Time and the story hailed her as “indisputably the world’s No. 1 woman writer.”