Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Vera Brittain
-
Standard Name: Brittain, Vera
Birth Name: Vera Mary Brittain
From her university days before the First World War, VB
was determined to be a writer. Her career as a novelist never fulfilled her own expectations; it was not until the publication of Testament of Youth, the first of her volumes combining autobiography with social and cultural history, that she achieved significant success. She also wrote both poetry and pamphlets. Much of her oeuvre is politically engaged, from her feminist journalism and social criticism of the 1920s to her pacifist writings of World War II.
To Vera Brittain
and some of her contemporaries, Women and Labour was the Bible of the Women's Movement. It influenced the writings of many early-twentieth-century feminists, including historian Alice Clark
and suffragette Constance Lytton
SS
's list of requisites for a critic or reviewer goes like this: Attention, impartiality, and no regard for age or sex.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
173
In April 1941 she was reviewing for John O'London's, Country Life...
Occupation
Mary Stott
Following in the footsteps of Vera Brittain
and Winifred Holtby
, MS
became first virtual, then titular Editor of the Women's Page for the Manchester Guardian (latterly the Guardian).
Stott, Mary. Forgetting’s No Excuse. Faber and Faber.
63-4
politics
Mary Stott
She scorned much of the debate as waffle but admired the clear, warm voice and the lucid, rational analysis offered by Shirley Williams
(daughter of Vera Brittain
). Sitting with other, mostly young women in...
Residence
Jan Struther
She was upset when her friend Sheridan Russell
(who worked with refugees and had introduced her to Adolf Placzek
) reproached her by letter for running to your lover at this terrible moment for your...
Literary responses
Jan Struther
Responses in England were more mixed. Hardly any reviewers were able to refrain from snide comment about the inaccurate representation of their country, but most added a saving clause: the film was genuinely moving. But...
Friends, Associates
Annie S. Swan
During the 1930s ASS
became a friend and correspondent of Winifred Holtby
. They exchanged copies of their books. After Holtby's early death a correspondence developed between ASS
and Vera Brittain
.
Swan, Annie S. The Letters of Annie S. Swan. Editor Nicoll, Mildred Robertson, Hodder and Stoughton.
164-5, 171, 249
Literary responses
Annie S. Swan
Among this book's admirers was Winifred Holtby
, who had proffered advice from herself and Vera Brittain
not to worry about reviews, and who then wrote favourable ones herself for both Good Housekeeping and Time...
Education
Doreen Wallace
At Somerville DW
became a close friend of Dorothy Sayers
(their religious and political disagreements later drove them apart) and in her circle met Vera Brittain
, Winifred Holtby
, and theSitwells
.
Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press.
57
politics
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Critic Arnold Rattenbury
feels that STW
's decision to join the Communist Party was the logical outcome of her earlier political choices, rather than a change of direction or feeling.
Rattenbury, Arnold. “How the sanity of poets can be edited away”. London Review of Books, pp. 15-19.
18
She and Ackland were...
Publishing
Dorothy Whipple
DW
must have been writing and publishing stories before her first novel appeared, since she was working on High Wages when her Miss Boddy was printed in Everyman and she recorded it as her first...
