Vera Brittain

29 December 1893 - 29 March 1970

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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...
Literary responses	Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence	EPL 's involvement in the militant suffrage movement was necessarily controversial: contemporaries both lauded and reviled her. In her diary Virginia Woolf described EPL 's style of public speaking in 1918 with some disdain. I...
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	Storm Jameson	The appearance of Europe to Let struck a blow at SJ 's in any case faltering friendship with Vera Brittain . They quarrelled over the character Olga (Johnson) Stehlík in The Hour of Prague...
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...
Literary responses	Storm Jameson	This text delivered a final blow to SJ 's long and close friendship with Vera Brittain (who had dedicated her political England's Hour to Jameson only that February). Not only did Brittain remain a staunch...
Literary responses	Radclyffe Hall	A number of writers rallied in support of RH . E. M. Forster and Leonard Woolf drafted a letter protesting the suppression of The Well of Loneliness. Its signatories included Bernard Shaw , T. S. Eliot
Material Conditions of Writing	Winifred Holtby	WH began writing this novel, which was originally titled Anlaby Wold, in 1920 while she and Vera Brittain were still students at Oxford . Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell, 1996. 155
Occupation	Kathleen E. Innes	Among those drafted to form the Mandate's Honorary Council in Britain were prominent politicians, clergy, feminists, and writers such as Margaret Ashton , Margaret Bondfield , Vera Brittain , Arthur Henderson , Laurence Housman ,...
Occupation	Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda	Women contributors ranged widely: Rebecca West , Stella Benson , Cicely Hamilton , Members of Parliament Lady Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson , Virginia Woolf , Naomi Mitchison , E. M. Delafield , Rose Macaulay
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, 1973. 63-4
Occupation	Muriel Box	She had in fact discussed this venture with Sydney, and he had encouraged her. She had formerly been a non-active director of his publishing company Triton Books . She was able to capitalise her new...
Other Life Event	Winifred Holtby	In January 1940Vera Brittain published Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby, an account of their friendship which continued unbroken and unspoilt for sixteen incomparable years. Brittain, Vera, and Rosalind Delmar. Testament of Friendship. Virago, 1980. 2 Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 1995. 337
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, 14 Oct. 1999, pp. 15-19. 18 She and Ackland were...
politics	Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda	The group's agenda was to obtain legislative improvements in child-assault laws, the position of unmarried mothers, equality of both parents in guardianship rights, equal pay for teachers, equal civic service opportunities for women and men...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.