Of all the women he had ever known she was the most ethereal. Loving her
was like swathing oneself with a long scarf of spirit. Harriet Hume,
musical, mystical and whimsical, is the very essence of femininity- both
princess and trollop.
Her beautiful room in a dilapidated Kensington House is the setting for
this love story, she herself an extension of the beauty which surrounds
her. Here amidst trees and lilacs, Arnold Condorex comes to be loved.
And love him Harriet does, beyond reason.
But Condorex is a man bent on power and Harriet is a woman with powers
of quite another kind. In ruthlessly pursuing his ambition, Harriet- his
better self- must be cast aside...How Harriet slowly triumphs over
Condorex is gradually revealed in this beautifully imagined fantasy.
Hariett Hume, Rebecca West's third novel, recounts the victory of love
and the love of beauty over man's eternal quest for dominance and
destruction. Written in a style as elegaic as the London it also
celebrates, Rebecca West's wisdom, imagination and wit are triumphantly
brought together in this, her third novel.
Dame Rebecca West, DBE (1892 - 1983) was an author, journalist, literary
critic and travel writer. A prolific author in many genres, West was
committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost
public intellectuals of the twentieth century. She met H.G. Wells in
1913, after her provocatively damning review of his novel Marriage
prompted him to invite her to lunch.
They fell in love, though Wells was married at the time, and their
affair lasted ten years producing a son.
In 1947 Time magazine called West, 'indisputably the world's number one
woman writer' and in 1954 Kenneth Tynan described her as, 'the best
journalist alive'. She was made CBE in 1949, in recognition of her
outstanding contribution to British letters.
