The Sentinel: An Incomplete Early Novel by Rebecca West

This volume presents text and commentary on an unknown novel by the suffragette Rebecca West which aims to shed light on the society and culture of the period. The novel offers a panorama of English society, West covers issues ranging from contemporary concerns within the feminist movement (feminism and socialism, female desire, sexuality and motherhood) to Russian revolutionaries, popular culture and aesthetic. In this edition Laing demonstrates why this flawed work offers a historical and biographical document and an insight in to the emergence of the young Rebecca West as a fiction writer and critic on the literary scene.