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.
Connections
Connections | Author name Sort descending | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Textual Production | Winifred Holtby | She had struggled to finish this novel in the final months of her illness. Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus. 316 |
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 |
Textual Production | Winifred Holtby | After WH
completed The Crowded Street, she began work on a historical romance based on the life of John Wycliffe
and titled The Runners. Shaw, Marion. The Clear Stream: A Life of Winifred Holtby. Virago. 114 |
Travel | Kathleen E. Innes | The tours were designed to acquaint League of Nations Union speakers with the workings of the League. Social and cultural events and tours of Geneva and environs were also arranged. Vera Brittain
, a LNU... |
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
,... |
Theme or Topic Treated in Text | Kathleen E. Innes | The pamphlet maintains that those who do not actually engage in the battle are perhaps in a position to make a saner judgment upon it as a whole than those who do. Innes, Kathleen E. Women and War. Friends’ Peace Committee. 2 Harvey, Kathryn. "Driven by War into Politics": A Feminist Biography of Kathleen Innes. University of Alberta. 210 |
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 | 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. 405, 556 |
Publishing | Storm Jameson | SJ
reviewed her friend Vera Brittain
's Testament of Youth for the Sunday Times. Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell. 2, 269 |
Textual Production | Storm Jameson | SJ
edited and wrote in Challenge to Death: A Symposium on War and Peace, an anthology featuring Vera Brittain
, Winifred Holtby
, Rebecca West
, Edmund Blunden
, Julian Huxley
, J. B. Priestley
, and Guy Chapman
. Birkett, Jennifer. Margaret Storm Jameson: A Life. Oxford University Press. 123n53 Jameson, Storm, editor. Challenge to Death. Constable. prelims Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row. 326-7 |
Family and Intimate relationships | Storm Jameson | While he studied at the |
politics | Storm Jameson | In November 1928 SJ
was one of many authors (including E. M. Forster
, Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
, and Desmond MacCarthy
) prepared to testify in defence of Radclyffe Hall
's lesbian novel The... |
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)... |
Textual Features | Storm Jameson | 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... |
Publishing | Storm Jameson | The plans for this publication were set in motion at a dinner party at the Wellington Club, hosted by Viscount Cecil
and organized primarily by Jameson and Philip Noel-Baker
. SJ
also edited the... |
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