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The Return of the Soldier
by Rebecca West
Reading club session: 7 November 2016
The Return of the Soldier is the debut novel of English novelist Rebecca West, first published in 1918. The novel recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of The First World War from the perspective of his female cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with trauma and its effects on the family, and optimistically suggests that psychoanalysis might offer a simple cure to the trauma.
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Rebecca West
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Novelist, journalist, critic, and feminist, Rebecca West (1892-1983) is considered one of the finest prose writers in twentieth-century England. Born Cicely Isabel Fairfield, she wrote under the penname Rebecca West. She has since become legendary, not only as an outspoken feminist and mistress of H.G. Wells, but also as the prolific author of novels like The Return of the Soldier, which helped to define an era. By mid-career in 1947, West was featured on the cover of Time and the story hailed her as "indisputably the world's No. 1 woman writer.
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Biography of Rebecca West by Lorna Gibb review
The Return of the soldier : 6 - Unknown Artist
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The Return of the Soldier : 5 - Unknown Artist
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The Return of the Soldier : 4 - Unknown Artist
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The Return of the Soldier : 2 - Unknown Artist
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The Return of the Soldier : 1 - Unknown Artist
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The Return of the Soldier : 3 - Unknown Artist
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Audiobook
External links​
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The Return of the Soldier in Wikipedia
Film
The novel was made into a 1982 film starring Alan Bates as Baldry and co-starring Julie Christie, Ian Holm, Glenda Jackson, and Ann-Margret.
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