Diana Trilling, speaking after West’s death in 1983, said it was “surely one of the very greatest books of the last 50 years.” Virtually everyone who has read it declares it to be West’s undisputed masterpiece. Richard Tillinghast, writing in The New Criterion in 1992, quotes from a variety of critics: “one of the great travel books of this century,” “one of the great books of our time,” “a major book in every sense.”Īnd yet, 2016 ended without anyone, it seems, commemorating the book’s 75th anniversary. There was no special edition, no retrospective conference, no editorial genuflection. Even the International Rebecca West Society appears to have missed the date - the conference topic for its annual meeting in late 2015 was a snoozer: “Rebecca West and Dissent: The Politics and Poetics of Heresy.”
Geoff Dyer, writing in the Guardian in 2006, called the book “one of the supreme masterpieces of the 20th century.” Ten years ago, Condé Nast Traveler named it among the top 86 travel books of all time.
IN 2000, the Modern Library listed Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, published in 1941, among the 20th century’s greatest works of nonfiction. Until recently, this was not an extraordinary assertion to make.
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