Person:Anthony West (3)

  1. Anthony Panther West1914 - 1987
Facts and Events
Name[1][8][9] Anthony Panther West
Alt Name[3][4][9] Anthony West
Gender Male
Birth[3][7][9] 4 Aug 1914 Hunstanton, Norfolk, England
Alt Birth[10] 5 Aug 1914 England
Immigration[2][3][7] 1950 New York City, New York, United States
Occupation[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][10][11] From 1950 to 1987 New York, United StatesEssayist & Writer
Death[2][3][4][7][9][10] 27 Dec 1987 Stonington, New London, Connecticut, United States
Reference Number? Q2852999?

Biography

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Anthony West (4 August 1914 – 27 December 1987) was an English author and literary critic.

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Anthony West (author). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
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References
  1. 1.0 1.1 Anthony West, in New York Times Books: New Life for Anthony West Tale by Edwin McDowell
    February 10, 1984.

    Mr. West is himself the son of two high-powered world-famous and parents not married to each other, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West. Anthony Panther West was born Aug. 4, 1914, in Hunstanton, Norfolk, England, his middle name derived from one of the nicknames his parents used with each other.

  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Anthony P. West, in Los Angeles Times: Anthony P. West Dies; Son of H.G. Wells by Burt A. Folkart
    December 29, 1987.

    Anthony P. West, a novelist and critic whose biography of his father, H.G. Wells, proved such a painful examination of his childhood that it took 40 years to complete, is dead at the age of 73. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, two daughters and a granddaughter.

  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 West, Anthony, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
    November 05, 2014.

    UK author, who did not use his mother's legal surname (Fairfield), son of H G Wells and Rebecca West (1892-1983); in America for much of his life.

  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Anthony West, in Find A Grave
    Memorial# 6440549, Oct 29, 2002.

    Birth: 1914
    Death: Dec. 27, 1987, Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, USA
    Burial: Unknown

    Novelist and critic. For more than 20 years, West reviewed books for The New Yorker. His novels included "The Vintage" and "Heritage," a thinly disguised tale about his tumultuous relationship with his parents, writers Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, who never married. In 1984 West's biography of his father, "H.G. Wells: Aspects of A Life," was published.

  5. Publishing: New Life for Anthony West Tale, in The New York Times: Books
    Article by Edwin McDowell, 10 Feb 1984.

    In 1955, Random House published Heritage by Anthony West, a novel about a son torn between two high-powered world-famous and parents not married to each other. Because Mr. West is himself the son of two high-powered world-famous and parents not married to each other, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West, the novel was widely believed to be only thinly disguised fiction. Indeed, Miss West was so angered by the portrait of the deceitful and calculating mother in the book that she threatened a lawsuit against any British house that published it. None did.

    But Miss West died last March, and now Secker & Warburg plans to publish Heritage in Britain in April. April is also when Washington Square Press in this country will publish a paperback version of Heritage, and in May Random House will bring out Mr. West's biography of his father, H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life.

    Some months ago, Patrick O'Connor, editor in chief of Washington Square Press, who had met Miss West in Britain in the 1950's, asked Anthony West to write an introduction to the new edition of Heritage. "I figured time might have tempered some of his opinions," Mr. O'Connor said, "but instead here came back the most angry introduction ever written to a novel."

    That is quite a claim, but then Mr. West, who is now 69 years old and has long lived in the United States, has written quite an introduction. Although acknowledging that he made a mistake naming his narrator Richard Savage, after an early-18th-century poet whose mother tried to get him hanged, Mr. West adds: "Time softens all things, and I can now also allow that my own mother never went as far with me literally as the Countess of Macclesfield felt able to go with her son. That, however, brings me to the end of the concessions I feel able to make in that quarter."

    The rest of that introduction does little to undercut Mr. O'Connor's claim and, in fact, does much to strengthen it. Mr. West closes with, "in view of the record of which it forms a part, Heritage seems to me to be a positively genial and good-humored work."

  6. Mother and Son, in The New York Review of Books
    Introductory extract of article by Anthony West, 1 Mar 1984.

    "I will confess that it was not by chance that the narrator-hero of my novel Heritage, published twenty-nine years ago, came to have Richard Savage for his name, and that the intentional reference it makes, to the early-eighteenth-century poet whose mother did her level best to get him hanged, was a mistake. It was a case of taking up a bludgeon to do what a stiletto would have done more neatly. Time softens all things, and I can now also allow that my own mother, Rebecca West, never went as far with me literally as the Countess of Macclesfield felt able to go with her son. That, however, brings me to the end of the concessions I feel able to make in that quarter. The truth of how things were between my mother and myself was that from the time that I turned fourteen, and she came to the point of a final rupture with my father, H.G. Wells, she was minded to do me what hurt she could, and that she remained set in that determination as long as there was breath in her body to sustain her malice.

    When I wrote my novel thirty-five years ago I was angry with her. I had lately transplanted myself to the United States to make a fresh start in life, three thousand miles out of her way, but I had found myself pursued by her animosity even at that distance. I had been doubly offended by the steps she had taken to make it difficult for me to make a career for myself in my new country because she had set about the job of queering my pitch with a blatancy that made it plain that she thought me too much of an idiot to notice what she was about. I had the vain hope that if I made it clear to her that I was under no illusions about the lengths to which she was going to disoblige me, she might tire of her sport and drop it. The calculation, as I should have known, was a fatuous one, and, as I should also have realized, the stupidly clever idea of using Richard Savage’s name had prejudiced whatever chance of success I might have had with the maneuver. And then I had also called the book Heritage."

  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Anthony West, Critic and Author; Wrote Essays for The New Yorker, in The New York Times: Obituaries
    article by Wolfgang Saxon, 28 Dec 1987.

    Anthony West, the critic and novelist, died yesterday at his home in Stonington, Conn., after suffering a stroke. He was 73 years old and also kept a home on Fisher's Island, N.Y.
    In 1950, he went to the United States, where he joined the staff of The New Yorker. Mr. West reviewed books for The New Yorker from 1950 into the late 1970's. Many of his essays also appeared in The New Yorker, which previously published much of the reportage of his mother - Dame Rebecca West - from around the world.

  8. 8.0 8.1 Saturday History Lesson: Rebecca West, H.G. Wells, and Anthony Panther West, in The Rumpus
    Article by Michelle Dean, 11 Aug 2012.

    "Anthony, the lingering evidence of the ten years they spent together, grew up in boarding schools. Eventually, in the sort of unconscious homage many parents dream of, he become a novelist and critic himself. But by far, all his best-remembered work would be about his parents, particularly an autobiographical novel called Heritage he published in 1955. In it the mother-figure is careless, capricious, and neglectful. The bitterness is palpable. West, naturally, hated it: “You are a gift to me — but in your book you did everything you could to withdraw that gift.”

    But Anthony thought of himself as only telling the truth. His unhappiness with his mother, combined with her efforts to thwart his (hagiographical) eventual biography of his father, led to a permanent estrangement between mother and son, too. And when the book was finally published in England in 1984, after West’s death, he wrote a preface in which he conceded only that: “Time softens all things, and I can now also allow that my own mother never went as far with me literally as the Countess of Macclesfield felt able to go with her son. That, however, brings me to the end of the concessions I feel able to make in that quarter.”

  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Anthony Panther West, in United States. Social Security Administration. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007. (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, 2015)
    Death Certificate Number 27887, 27 Dec 1987.

    Name: Anthony Panther West [Anthony West]
    SSN: 076264977
    Gender: Male
    Race: White
    Birth Date: 4 Aug 1914
    Birth Place: Hunstanton N, United Kingdom
    Death Date: 27 Dec 1987
    Father: Herbert G Wells
    Mother: Rebecca West
    Death Certificate Number: 27887
    Type of Claim: Original SSN.
    Notes: Mar 1950: Name listed as ANTHONY PANTHER WEST; 22 May 1998: Name listed as ANTHONY WEST

  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Anthony P West, in Connecticut. Department of Health. Connecticut Death Index, 1949-2012. (Hartford, Connecticut)
    State File #27887, 27 Dec 1987.

    Name: Anthony P West
    Race: White
    Occupation: AUTHOR WRITER
    Industry: SELF EMPLOYED
    Marital Status: Married
    Birth Date: 5 Aug 1914
    Birth Place: England
    Address: MADELINE
    Residence : New York
    Death Date: 27 Dec 1987
    Death Place: Stonington, Connecticut
    Age: 73 Years
    Spouse: Lilly
    Father's Surname: Wells
    State File #: 27887

  11. Novelist and critic. For more than 20 years, West reviewed books for The New Yorker. His novels included "The Vintage" and "Heritage," a thinly disguised tale about his tumultuous relationship with his parents, writers Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, who never married. In 1984 West's biography of his father, "H.G. Wells: Aspects of A Life," was published.