Image:BiographicalDictionary115-CecilyFairfield.png

Watchers
Image Information
People
Dame Rebecca West1892 - 1983
Dr. Josephine Letitia Denny Fairfield1885 - 1978
Winifred A. "Winnie" Fairfield1887 -
Families
Charles Fairfield and Isabella Mackenzie (1)
Copyright holder
Elizabeth Ewan
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Description

Extract of Cecily Fairfield biography from "The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004"

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Transcribed Text

"FAIRFIELD Cecily (or Cicily) Isabel (aka Cissie, Panther) [Rebecca West, Rachel East, Conway Power], DBE, m. Andrews, born London 21 Dec. 1892, died London 15 March 1983. Journalist, novelist, critic, travel-writer, feminist and political commentator. Daughter of Isabella Campbell Mackenzie, governess, pianist and copy-typist, and Charles Fairfield, Irish-born soldier, journalist and entrepreneur.

After Charles Fairfield abandoned the family in 1901 (dying in 1906), their mother took the three children from London to her native Edinburgh, where they lived in Hope Park Square (represented in Rebecca West's novel, The Judge) and Buccleuch Place. Cecily Fairfield was educated as a scholarship student at George Watson's Ladies College, winning 'Best Essay' prize, 1906-7. She campaigned for women's suffrage and at 14 published a letter in The Scotsman (16 October 1907) on `Women's Electoral Claims', writing later: 'Scotland has come out of the militant suffrage agitation very well indeed. There is something magnificently dramatic about the way the Scottish woman ... has quietly gone about her warfare' (West [1911] 1982, p. 192). Her first, unpublished, novel, 'The Sentinel', written in her late teens, portrays its heroine's sexual and political awakening during suffrage unrest. The Judge (1922), featuring a young Edinburgh suffragette, was described by Hugh MacDiarmid as 'unfortunately — the best Scottish novel of recent years (MacDiarmid, [1926], 1995, p. 346).

Cecily was the youngest of three siblings. Her sister Josephine Letitia (Lettie) Denny Fairfield (1885-1978) qualified in medicine, Edinburgh 1907, then studied law and became a medical administrator; she supervised women doctors in the First World War and was made CBE in 1919. Winifred (Winnie) Fairfield (1887-1960), to whom Cecily was close, trained as a teacher. All three sisters, young socialists and suffragists, joined the Fabian Society. The family moved back to London in 1910, where 17 year-old Cecily studied for a year at the Academy of Dramatic Art in London and worked briefly as an actor. She soon turned to journalism, publishing her first theatre review in the Evening Standard and writing for a new feminist journal, The Frrewoman. Taking the pseudonym 'Rebecca West' from a strong-willed character in lbsen's play Ronnersholm, she swiftly established a reputation with her often iconoclastic writing; other pieces appeared in the Daily News and socialist Clarion. Her journalism led to a fateful meeting. After reviewing H. G. Wells's novel Marriage (1912), Rebecca West, aged 19, met the famous author, then 46 and married. An intense, troubled, ten-year relationship began in 1913, and their son Anthony..." (continued on page 116)

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Source

The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004, by Elizabeth Ewan, Sue Innes, Sian Reynolds, page 115, as scanned and reprinted at GoogleBooks. Retrieved 30 Mar 2016.

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  • (del) (cur) 05:06, 30 March 2016 . . BobC (Talk | contribs) . . 678×541 (230,988 bytes) (== Description == Extract of Cecily Fairfield biography from "The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004" == Transcribed Text == "FAIRFIELD Cecily (or Cicily) Isabel (aka Cissie, Panther) [Rebecca West, Rachel East, Co)

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