This Real Night

The second installment of West’s Saga of the Century trilogy—now available as an ebookIn the sequel to The Fountain Overflows , Rose Aubrey, her sisters, and her cousin stand on the brink of adulthood and a new era for womenThey have put down their schoolbooks and put up their hair, but a talented musician and her kin ponder what being a young woman on one’s own will entail. Abandoned by their feckless father, Rose and her family must move beyond their comfortable drawing room to discover a world of kind patrons, music teachers, and concert hall acclaim, but also domestic strife, anti-Semitism, and social pressure to marry. Set before World War I, Rebecca West’s intimate, eloquent family portrait brings to life a time when women recognized their own voices and the joys of living off one’s own talents. Dame Rebecca West (1892–1983) is one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists, journalists, and literary critics of the twentieth century. Uniquely wide-ranging in subject matter and breathtakingly intelligent in her ability to take on the oldest and knottiest problems of human relations, West was a thoroughly entertaining public intellectual. In her eleven novels, beginning with The Return of the Soldier, she explored topics including feminism, socialism, love, betrayal, and identity. West’s prolific journalistic works include her coverage of the Nuremberg trials for the New Yorker , published as A Train of Powder, and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon , her epic study of Yugoslavia. She had a son with H.G. Wells, and later married banker Henry Maxwell Andrews, continuing to write, and publish, until she died in London at age ninety.