Author Guide · Fiction and Reportage
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In 1937 Rebecca West and her husband spent six weeks travelling through Yugoslavia, from Croatia to Macedonia and Montenegro. The book she made of it took five years and runs to more than 1,100 pages in modern editions; it came out in 1941, as Germany invaded the country. By then she had been famous for a quarter of a century. Born Cicily Fairfield in London in 1892, she took her pen name from a heroine of Ibsen, wrote for the feminist paper The Freewoman at nineteen, and published her first novel, about a shell-shocked officer, in 1918. After the Second World War she reported on the trial of William Joyce and on Nuremberg, and in 1948 President Truman called her “the world’s best reporter”. This guide covers her nine key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1918–1966 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Rebecca West’s best-known books are Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her account of Yugoslavia, the First World War novel The Return of the Soldier (1918), the family novel The Fountain Overflows (1956) and her trial reporting in The Meaning of Treason (1947) and A Train of Powder (1955). Start with The Return of the Soldier, a short novel; the lists below show where her fiction and her reportage lead from there.
Where to Start with Rebecca West
If you want a short way in
→ The Return of the Soldier (1918) — her first novel, about a soldier who forgets fifteen years.
If you want her major work
→ Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) — the Yugoslav journey, history and argument in one book.
If you want her reporting on war and justice
→ A Train of Powder (1955) — Nuremberg and other trials of the 1940s.
If you want a long, warm family novel
→ The Fountain Overflows (1956) — an Edwardian childhood close to her own.
9 Rebecca West Books, in Order
The Return of the Soldier
Captain Chris Baldry comes home from France with shell shock, believing he is twenty and in love with Margaret Grey, an innkeeper’s daughter he knew fifteen years earlier, not with his wife Kitty. The story is told by his cousin Jenny at Baldry Court outside London. It was filmed in 1982 with Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Glenda Jackson and Ann-Margret.
The Judge
Ellen Melville, a seventeen-year-old typist and suffragette in an Edinburgh law office, falls in love with Richard Yaverland, a worldly man whose mother Marion carries a past the town has never forgiven. The book darkens into a Gothic tragedy. Its epigraph: “Every mother is a judge who sentences the children for the sins of the father.”
Harriet Hume
Harriet, a pianist with too-small hands, can read the thoughts of her lover Arnold Condorex, an ambitious politician. As his career rises, her gift becomes the problem between them. It is her one venture into fantasy, and her most stylised book.
The Thinking Reed
Isabelle, a rich young American widow, comes to France in the 1920s, breaks with one lover, loses the man she wants and marries Marc Sallafranque, a wealthy French industrialist. The novel satirises the luxury of the very rich as the Depression approaches; the title comes from Pascal’s description of man as a thinking reed. It was her last novel for twenty years.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Built on a six-week journey in 1937 through Croatia, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, with long passages of Balkan history, from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand back to the battle of 1389. The black lamb is a sacrifice she saw at a rite in Macedonia; the grey falcon comes from a Serbian folk song. Geoff Dyer called it one of the supreme masterpieces of the century; critics such as Brian Hall have argued that it sees the region mainly through Serb eyes.
The Meaning of Treason
Grown from her New Yorker reports on the post-war trials of William Joyce, the Nazi broadcaster known as “Lord Haw-Haw”, and John Amery, both hanged for treason, and on the British men who fought for Germany. In 1964 she expanded it as The New Meaning of Treason, adding the atomic spies and the Cold War spy scandals.
A Train of Powder
Her account of the Nuremberg trials, which she covered for The New Yorker, collected with other trial reports: “Opera in Greenville”, on the trial of a lynch mob in South Carolina whose members were acquitted, a London murder case and the case of a young British wireless operator who passed information to the Soviets.
The Fountain Overflows
Rose Aubrey looks back on a childhood around 1900 in a musical, hard-up family: a mother, Clare, who gave up a career as a pianist, and a brilliant father, Piers, who gambles the family into poverty. Much of it follows West’s own childhood. It was meant as the first part of a trilogy; the sequels, This Real Night and Cousin Rosamund, appeared after her death.
The Birds Fall Down
Laura Rowan, eighteen, half English and half Russian, travels by train across France with her grandfather Count Diakonov, an exiled minister of the Tsar, and learns that his trusted secretary Kamensky is both a revolutionary leader and a police spy. The plot draws on a real case of a Russian revolutionary chief exposed as a paid Tsarist agent. The BBC filmed it in 1978.
In What Order to Read Rebecca West
Apart from The Fountain Overflows and its two posthumous sequels, none of her books continues another, so you can read by interest. Her work runs in two lines: the novels, from The Return of the Soldier (1918) to The Birds Fall Down (1966), and the reportage and history, which peaks with Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and the trial books of the 1940s and 1950s.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is long enough to read in parts; many readers take one region at a time. If you finish The Fountain Overflows and want more of the Aubreys, go on to This Real Night (1984) and Cousin Rosamund (1985).
A reading path
1. The Return of the Soldier (1918)
2. The Fountain Overflows (1956)
3. A Train of Powder (1955)
4. The Birds Fall Down (1966)
5. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
Everything Else Rebecca West Published
Beyond the 9 key books: 15 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Fiction
4
4 books · 1935–1986
- 1935The Harsh Voiceshort novels
- 1984This Real Nightsequel to The Fountain Overflows, published after her death
- 1985Cousin Rosamundthe unfinished third Aubrey novel
- 1986Sunfloweran unfinished novel, published after her death
Criticism, biography and history
11
11 books · 1916–1987
- 1916Henry Jamesher first book, a critical study
- 1928The Strange Necessityessays and criticism
- 1931Ending in Earnestessays
- 1932Arnold Bennett Himselfa short study
- 1933St. Augustinea biography
- 1958The Court and the Castleessays
- 1963The Vassall Affairon the Admiralty spy case
- 1964The New Meaning of Treasonthe expanded Meaning of Treason
- 19821900a social history of a single year
- 1982The Young Rebeccaher journalism of 1911–1917
- 1987Family Memoriesautobiographical writings, published after her death
The years · 1892–1983
Quick facts about Rebecca West
- Known for
- Rebecca West is known for joining fiction, travel, history and courtroom reporting in one career, above all for her vast study of Yugoslavia on the eve of the Second World War.
- 1892
- Born Cicily Fairfield in London
- 1959
- Made a Dame (DBE)
- 1983
- Dies in London, aged 90
- Born
- 21 December 1892, London, as Cicily Isabel Fairfield
- Pen name
- From the rebellious heroine of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm
- Son
- Anthony West, born in 1914, with H. G. Wells
- Married
- The banker Henry Maxwell Andrews, in 1930; he died in 1968
- Honours
- CBE (1949), DBE (1959), Benson Medal (1966)
- Died
- 15 March 1983, London; buried at Brookwood Cemetery
The red mark is 1941: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which her biographer Victoria Glendinning called the central book of her life.
How Rebecca West Writes: The Reporter and the Novelist
She began as a reviewer, and a ferocious one. Her pieces for The Freewoman and The Clarion before the First World War made her name, and in 1916 George Bernard Shaw wrote that she “could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely.” That edge stays in all her later work: long, argued sentences that end in a judgement.
Her reportage is never only a record. In Black Lamb and Grey Falcon a train journey or a conversation with a guide opens out into centuries of history, and into her own arguments about empire, religion and the relations between men and women. In the trial books she watches defendants, judges and spectators as closely as a novelist would, and asks why people betray their country or join a mob.
Her fiction moves through very different forms: the compressed, almost single-scene The Return of the Soldier, the fantasy of Harriet Hume, the society satire of The Thinking Reed, the spy plot of The Birds Fall Down. What connects them is a concern with what people know and refuse to know about each other, and with women who see more than the men around them.
Watch
Rebecca West on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.
Rebecca West discusses Kim Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union and the subject of treason with William F. Buckley Jr. on Firing Line, taped on 26 February 1968. From the official Hoover Institution Library & Archives channel.
Frequently asked questions about Rebecca West’s books
How many books has Rebecca West written?
More than twenty-five, counting books published after her death in 1983. Nine are the key books on this page, from The Return of the Soldier (1918) to The Birds Fall Down (1966); the rest, listed under “Everything else”, are criticism, biography, history, short novels and posthumous fiction.
What are Rebecca West’s books in order?
The Return of the Soldier (1918), The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), The Thinking Reed (1936), Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), The Meaning of Treason (1947), A Train of Powder (1955), The Fountain Overflows (1956) and The Birds Fall Down (1966).
Where should I start with Rebecca West?
With The Return of the Soldier, her short first novel about a shell-shocked officer who has lost fifteen years of memory. If you prefer non-fiction, start with A Train of Powder, then take on Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
What is Rebecca West’s most famous book?
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her account of a journey through Yugoslavia in 1937 and of the region’s history. It appears on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best non-fiction books. Her best-known novel is The Return of the Soldier.
Was Rebecca West her real name?
No. She was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield in 1892 and took the name Rebecca West from the rebellious heroine of Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm. Her first article under that name appeared in The Freewoman in 1912.
What was Rebecca West’s relationship with H. G. Wells?
Wells, who was married and 26 years older, became her lover in late 1913. Their son, Anthony West, was born on 4 August 1914. The affair lasted about ten years, and they stayed friends until Wells died in 1946.
What was the controversy over her son’s novel Heritage?
In 1955 Anthony West published Heritage, a novel based on his childhood that portrayed a deceitful, unloving mother. Rebecca West broke with him and threatened to sue any English publisher; the book had no English edition until 1984, after her death. Mother and son were never fully reconciled.
Has The Return of the Soldier been adapted?
Yes. John Van Druten adapted it for the London stage in 1928, and in 1982 it became a film directed by Alan Bridges, with Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Glenda Jackson and Ann-Margret. A musical version premiered in London in 2014. The Birds Fall Down was filmed by the BBC in 1978.
Did Rebecca West cover the Nuremberg trials?
Yes, for The New Yorker. Her account is the centre of A Train of Powder (1955). Before that she reported on the treason trials of William Joyce and John Amery, the basis of The Meaning of Treason (1947).
Is Rebecca West still alive?
No. She died in London on 15 March 1983, aged 90, and is buried at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. She had been made a Dame in 1959.
Footnotes
- Rebecca West — Wikipedia
- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon — Wikipedia
- The Return of the Soldier — Wikipedia
- The Fountain Overflows — EBSCO Research Starters
- The Birds Fall Down — EBSCO Research Starters
- A Train of Powder — ANZ LitLovers
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”
— Rebecca West, “Mr Chesterton in Hysterics”, The Clarion (14 November 1913)
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