{"product_id":"the-return-of-the-soldier-isbn-9780141180656","title":"The Return of the Soldier","description":"Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.“Brilliant . . . [West was] an artist who wrote wonderful prose, who took chances with language and cadence, and who wrote poetically, even of prosaic subjects.\u003ci\u003e”\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRebecca West\u003c\/b\u003e, novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic, was one of the century's most brilliant and forceful writers.  Born Cicily Isabel Fairfield on December 21, 1892, she was educated at George Watson's Ladies College.  She adopted the \u003ci\u003enom de plume\u003c\/i\u003e Rebecca West from Ibsen's \u003cb\u003eRomserholm\u003c\/b\u003e in which she once appeared.  At an early age she threw herself into the suffragette movement and in 1911 joined the staff of the \u003cb\u003eFreewoman\u003c\/b\u003e and in the following year became a political writer on the socialist newspaper the \u003cb\u003eClarion\u003c\/b\u003e.  Her love affair with the novelist H.G. Wells began in 1913 and lasted for ten, not always happy, years.  Their son, Anthony West, her only child, was born in 1914.  After the break with Wells she went to America where she lectured and formed what was to be a long association reviewing for the \u003cb\u003eNew York Herlad-Tribune\u003c\/b\u003e.  In 1930 she married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker, and they lived in Buckinhamshire until his death in 1968, after which Rebecca West moved to London.\u003cp\u003eHer first published book was a critical study of Henry James, her second a novel, \u003cb\u003eThe Return of the Soldier\u003c\/b\u003e (1918), which was recently made into a successful film.  She published eight novels including \u003cb\u003eThe Judge\u003c\/b\u003e (1922), \u003cb\u003eHarriet Hume\u003c\/b\u003e (1929), and the largely autobiographical \u003cb\u003eThe Fountain Overflows\u003c\/b\u003e (1957).  Her last novel, \u003cb\u003eThe Birds Fall Down\u003c\/b\u003e (1966), was adapted or BBC television in 1978.  In the mid-thirties she made several trips to the Balkans in order to gather material for a travel book.  But her interest in the subject deepened and she returned to the area many times to collect more material.  The result was her masterpiece, \u003cb\u003eBlack Lamb and Grey Falcon\u003c\/b\u003e, published in 1941 in two volumes.  In her obituary \u003cb\u003eThe Times\u003c\/b\u003e (London) remarked of this work that it \"was immediately recognized as a \u003ci\u003emagnum opus\u003c\/i\u003e, as astonishing in its range, in its subtlety and power of its judgment, as it is brilliant in expression.\"  As a result of the books' publication, she was invited during the war to superintend the BBC broadcasts to Yugoslavia.  After the war she was present at the Nuremberg Trials and her account of these and of other trials which arose out of the relation of the individual to the state, were published in two books, \u003cb\u003eThe Meaning of Treason\u003c\/b\u003e (1949) and \u003cb\u003eA Train of Powder\u003c\/b\u003e (1955).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSamuel Hynes \u003c\/b\u003eis Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of several major works of literary criticism, including \u003cb\u003eThe Auden Generation\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003eEdwardian Occasions\u003c\/b\u003e, and \u003cb\u003eThe Edwardian Turn of Mind\u003c\/b\u003e. Hynes's wartime experiences as a Marine Corps pilot were the basis for his highly praised memoir, \u003cb\u003eFlights of Passage\u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cb\u003eThe Soldiers' Tale\u003c\/b\u003e, his book about soldiers' narratives of the two world wars and Vietnam, won a Robert F. Kennedy Award. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter I\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Ah, don't begin to fuss!\" wailed Kitty. \"If a woman began to worry in  these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! Besides, if  he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really hot, he'd  have found some way of telling me instead of just leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.'  He'll be all right.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it  again, now that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped  the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, so full of  whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all  respects as though there were still a child in the house. It was the first lavish  day of spring, and the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows and  the flowered curtains so brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly  have been raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. Sunlight  was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with  strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which should have been gravely watched for  hours, on the white paint and the blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse,  which had been Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed  what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out Mary and her  little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the mantelpiece, under the loved print  of the snarling tiger, in attitudes that were at once angular and relaxed, as though  they were ready for play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from  drowsing in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the woolly  white dog and the black cat with eyes that roll. Everything was there except Oliver.  I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty revisiting her dead. But she called  after me:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Come here, Jenny. I'm going to dry my hair.\" And when I looked again  I saw that her golden hair was all about her shoulders and that she wore over her  frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked so like a girl on  a magazine cover that one expected to find a large \"15 cents\" somewhere attached  to her person. She had taken Nanny's big basket-chair from its place by the highchair,  and was pushing it over to the middle window. \"I always come in here when Emery has  washed my hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish Chris wouldn't have it  kept as a nursery when there's no chance-\" She sat down, swept her hair over the  back of the chair into the sunlight, and held out to me her tortoiseshell hair-brush.  \"Give it a brush now and then, like a good soul; but be careful. Tortoise snaps so!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I took the brush and turned to the window, leaning my forehead against the glass  and staring unobservantly at the view. You probably know the beauty of that view;  for when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his marriage he handed it over to architects  who had not so much the wild eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist,  and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photographs  in the illustrated papers. The house lies on the crest of Harrowweald, and from its  windows the eye drops to miles of emerald pastureland lying wet and brilliant under  a westward line of sleek hills, blue with distance and distant woods, while nearer  it range the suave decorum of the lawn and the Lebanon cedar, the branches of which  are like darkness made palpable, and the minatory gauntnesses of the topmost pines  in the wood that breaks downward, its bare boughs a close texture of browns and purples,  from the pond on the edge of the hill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That day its beauty was an affront to me,  because, like most Englishwomen of my time, I was wishing for the return of a soldier.  Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen prehensile  gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my Cousin Christopher from the  wars and seal him in this green pleasantness his wife and I now looked upon. Of late  I had had bad dreams about him. By nights I saw Chris running across the brown rottenness  of No-Man's-Land, starting back here because he trod upon a hand, not even looking  there because of the awfulness of an unburied head, and not till my dream was packed  full of horror did I see him pitch forward on his knees as he reached safety, if  it was that. For on the war-films I have seen men slip down as softly from the trench-parapet,  and none but the grimmer philosophers could say that they had reached safety by their  fall. And when I escaped into wakefulness it was only to lie stiff and think of stories  I had heard in the boyish voice of the modern subaltern, which rings indomitable,  yet has most of its gay notes flattened: \"We were all of us in a barn one night,  and a shell came along. My pal sang out, 'Help me, old man; I've got no legs!' and  I had to answer, 'I can't, old man; I've got no hands!' \" Well, such are the dreams  of Englishwomen to-day. I could not complain, but I wished for the return of our  soldier. So I said:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I wish we could hear from Chris. It is a fortnight since he  wrote.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And then it was that Kitty wailed, \"Ah, don't begin to fuss!\" and bent over  her image in a hand-mirror as one might bend for refreshment over scented flowers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I tried to build about me such a little globe of ease as always ensphered her, and  thought of all that remained good in our lives though Chris was gone. I was sure  that we were preserved from the reproach of luxury, because we had made a fine place  for Chris, one little part of the world that was, so far as surfaces could make it  so, good enough for his amazing goodness. Here we had nourished that surpassing amiability  which was so habitual that one took it as one of his physical characteristics, and  regarded any lapse into bad temper as a calamity as startling as the breaking of  a leg; here we had made happiness inevitable for him. I could shut my eyes and think  of innumerable proofs of how well we had succeeded, for there never was so visibly  contented a man. And I recalled all that he did one morning just a year ago when  he went to the front.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e First he had sat in the morning-room and talked and stared  out on the lawns that already had the desolation of an empty stage, although he had  not yet gone; then broke off suddenly and went about the house, looking into many  rooms. He went to the stables and looked at the horses and had the dogs brought out;  he refrained from touching them or speaking to them, as though he felt himself already  infected with the squalor of war and did not want to contaminate their bright physical  well-being. Then he went to the edge of the wood and stood staring down into the  clumps of dark-leaved rhododendrons and the yellow tangle of last year's bracken  and the cold winter black of the trees. (From this very window I had spied on him.)  Then he moved broodingly back to the house to be with his wife until the moment of  his going, when Kitty and I stood on the steps to see him motor off to Waterloo.  He kissed us both. As he bent over me I noticed once again how his hair was of two  colors, brown and gold. Then he got into the car, put on his Tommy air, and said:  \"So long! I'll write you from Berlin!\" and as he spoke his head dropped back, and  he set a hard stare on the house. That meant, I knew, that he loved the life he had  lived with us and desired to carry with him to the dreary place of death and dirt  the complete memory of everything about his home, on which his mind could brush when  things were at their worst, as a man might finger an amulet through his shirt. This  house, this life with us, was the core of his heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"If he could come back!\" I  said. \"He was so happy here!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And Kitty answered:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He could not have been happier.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was important that he should have been happy, for, you see, he was not like other  city men. When we had played together as children in that wood he had always shown  great faith in the imminence of the improbable. He thought that the birch-tree would  really stir and shrink and quicken into an enchanted princess, that he really was  a red Indian, and that his disguise would suddenly fall from him at the right sundown,  that at any moment a tiger might lift red fangs through the bracken, and he expected  these things with a stronger motion of the imagination than the ordinary child's  make-believe. And from a thousand intimations, from his occasional clear fixity of  gaze on good things as though they were about to dissolve into better, from the passionate  anticipation with which he went to new countries or met new people, I was aware that  this faith had persisted into his adult life. He had exchanged his expectation of  becoming a red Indian for the equally wistful aspiration of becoming completely reconciled  to life. It was his hopeless hope that some time he would have an experience that  would act on his life like alchemy, turning to gold all the dark metals of events,  and from that revelation he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy.  There had been, of course, no chance of his ever getting it. Literally there wasn't  room to swing a revelation in his crowded life. First of all, at his father's death  he had been obliged to take over a business that was weighted by the needs of a mob  of female relatives who were all useless either in the old way, with antimacassars,  or in the new way, with gold-clubs; then Kitty had come along and picked up his conception  of normal expenditure, and carelessly stretched it as a woman stretches a new glove  on her hand.","brand":"Penguin Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304021217509,"sku":"NP9780141180656","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780141180656.jpg?v=1767741226","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-return-of-the-soldier-isbn-9780141180656","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}