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.
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...
Reception
Phyllis Bentley
A Modern Tragedy is one of PB
's better-known novels.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
She was somewhat offended when her friend Vera Brittain
told her that she thought that the character of Elaine from this novel was based on...
Residence
Storm Jameson
SJ
did not remain solely at Heathfield throughout the war. Like Vera Brittain
, she took rooms in London in Portland Place: while Brittain wote England's Hour (published in 1941 and dedicated to Jameson)...
Residence
Winifred Holtby
Now or soon afterwards WH
and Vera Brittain
began sharing their first London flat at 52 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury.
Biographers of Brittain date this event as happening in January 1922.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
166-7
Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell.
159, 161
Shaw, Marion. The Clear Stream: A Life of Winifred Holtby. Virago.
106
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...
The author discusses her literary and political strategies in a letter to Evelyn Sharp
in the month of publication. I am sending you a book written first against war. I thought that I should more...
Textual Features
Winifred Holtby
Although not explicitly autobiographical, The Crowded Street owes much to WH
's relationship with Vera Brittain
: Brittain recognized herself in Delia, and Holtby remarked that Muriel was part of me only—the stupid frightened part...
Textual Features
Storm Jameson
Throughout this work SJ
glosses over such events as marriage, divorce, and illness in favour of examining her psychology and behaviour, her struggle to balance motherhood and a public career, the value of creative writing...
Textual Production
Jan Morris
More than a decade later, in 1978, JM
followed her own portrait of Oxford by editing The Oxford Book of Oxford, a quirky anthology of often very short anecdotes and other excerpts, aimed less...
The following year, however, SP
demonstrated diligent care for her mother's reputation: she was outraged by one paragraph in Ray Strachey
's The Cause. Though it expressed gratitude and admiration for Emmeline Pankhurst
...
Textual Production
Muriel Box
MB
's first contact with her future second husband arose out of correspondence about legal matters canvassed in this book.
Box, Muriel. Rebel Advocate. Victor Gollancz.
195
The work itself fulfilled the aim of Femina Books
: to produce titles with...
Textual Production
Winifred Holtby
WH
dedicated the novel to her friend Jean Finlay McWilliam
and took its title from a poem by Vera Brittain
.
Holtby, Winifred. The Crowded Street. Virago.
prelims
The novel, completed in August 1923, did not wholly satisfy its author.
Hardisty, Claire, and Winifred Holtby. “Introduction”. The Crowded Street, Virago, p. ix - xiii.
ix
Textual Production
Stevie Smith
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...
