Rebecca West and newspaper writing as modernist genre

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough a number of pivotal voices of literary modernism engaged in newspaper work, there is little acknowledgement of how this work created connections between political movements and literary rhetoric in the daily press. Through an analysis of the early interdisciplinary writing of Rebecca West, this article demonstrates that newspapers served as intersectional texts, creating connections between the political and the literary. West in particular predicted the revolutionary potential in reaching a larger audience reading more, and cheaper, publications, and her incendiary prose invited readers and fellow writers to emphasize the role of community exchange in the commodity-driven newspaper. Through her newspaper writing, West re-invents the newspaper genre and broadens her political message. This article thus encourages a reassessment of the impact of mechanization as metaphor in modernist literature.