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.
With this book PL
was a second time shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. Twayne.
96
An actual biographer, Mark Bostridge
, called this a fine book, and said he relished the parallels with his actual situation...
Literary responses
Maude Royden
Many reviewers praised this book as a quintessential love story. The Christian Science Monitor called it a moving love story, as romantic in its way, as that of the Brownings, while the News Chronicle...
Literary responses
Muriel Box
Its recent editors call it very much a beginner's piece of work with regard to dialogue and stage impact. Yet they feel it is valuable for exemplifying the way that feminist ideas survived and continued...
Literary responses
Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers was well reviewed. George Bernard Shaw
responded enthusiastically to the book, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
expressed her pleasure at its positive reception. Vera Brittain
also praised it, favourably comparing SP
's activism for...
Intertextuality and Influence
May Cannan
The critic and family friend Sir Walter Raleigh
, who saw these poems before publication, called them heart-breaking and terribly naked.
Cannan, May, and Bevil Quiller-Couch. “Editorial Materials”. The Tears of War, edited by Charlotte Fyfe, Cavalier Books, p. Various pages.
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
Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline. My Part in a Changing World. Hyperion.
338
Back in England, she contacted Vera Brittain
after having read Brittain's Testament of Youth, 1933, to invite Brittain to visit the...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ
was mildly satirical about the left-wing and anti-monarchical tendencies of Naomi Mitchison
(a well-known author of the times)
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
105
and the allegedly somewhat self-important Vera Brittain
(who, felt Jenkins, had let the...
Friends, Associates
Stella Benson
This summer she spent a holiday at Varengeville in Normandy, with Naomi Mitchison
. She also met Sydney Schiff
(at Chesham in Buckinghamshire), and on 31 August 1925 had her first meeting with...
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
Friends, Associates
Storm Jameson
SJ
wrote to Vera Brittain
(who had recently reviewed her), thereby initiating a close friendship which, however, was neither wholly relaxed nor in the long run lasting. Jameson and Winifred Holtby
, both Yorkshirewomen, more...
Friends, Associates
Phyllis Bentley
PB
stayed with Vera Brittain
and Winifred Holtby
at the house in Glebe Place in Chelsea where they and Brittain's husband, George Catlin
, all lived.
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz.
174
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz.
38, 56
Friends, Associates
Storm Jameson
SJ
invited Vera Brittain
live with her and her sister's family at Heathfield, the house they had taken at Mortimer in Berkshire. Brittain accepted, and stayed about ten weeks.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
