Vera Brittain

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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.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photo of Vera Brittain, looking straight at the camera, wearing a white shirt and a white scarf wrapped around her head.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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, 1962.
174
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz, 1986.
38, 56
Friends, Associates Una Marson
In May 1949, UM invited Vera Brittain to Kingston to speak to young Jamaican writers and encourage their literary work.
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press, 1998.
183
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bentley
At a dinner party at Vera Brittain 's Chelsea house, PB met Naomi Mitchison , Cecil Roberts , and Ellen Wilkinson .
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz, 1986.
39-40
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bentley
Vera Brittain introduced PB , during her stay in Chelsea, to birth-control crusader Marie Stopes .
Brittain, Vera. Chronicle of Friendship. Editor Bishop, Alan, Gollancz, 1986.
41
Friends, Associates Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
During her stay in India, EPL met the poet Rabindranath Tagore .
Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline. My Part in a Changing World. Hyperion, 1976.
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 Evelyn Sharp
Their many shared friends included Vera Brittain , Winifred Holtby , and the writer and politician Mary Agnes Hamilton . In 1940 Hamilton took Harry Gill , president of the Railway Clerks' Association and a...
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.
qtd. in
Cannan, May, and Bevil Quiller-Couch. “Editorial Materials”. The Tears of War, edited by Charlotte Fyfe, Cavalier Books, 2000, p. Various pages.
145
Once published, they brought MC many letters, among them one from Percival James Slater
Intertextuality and Influence Olive Schreiner
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
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 Margaret Kennedy
The novel's initial favourable reviews came from an earlier generation of authors, including George Moore , A. E. Housman , Thomas Hardy , Arnold Bennett , J. M. Barrie , and H. G. Wells ...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
Some commentators, including Vera Brittain , felt this essay too clearly reflected the influence of Virginia Woolf .
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus, 2002.
133
Critic Ruth Siegel commends it as displaying the assertiveness characteristic of Lehmann's expository prose, which could...
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...
Literary responses Penelope Lively
With this book PL was a second time shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Moran, Mary Hurley. Penelope Lively. Twayne, 1993.
96
An actual biographer, Mark Bostridge , called this a fine book, and said he relished the parallels with his actual situation...
Literary responses Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda
Virginia Woolf liked the work, but observed that MHVR was not subtle.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 167
Close friend Winifred Holtby , journalist and novelist, thought that the autobiography was splendidly free from bunk,
qtd. in
Eoff, Shirley. Viscountess Rhondda: Equalitarian Feminist. Ohio State University Press, 1991.
103
a sentiment that...
Literary responses Stella Benson
Forty-six years after Benson's death, Naomi Mitchison acknowledged that her work had ceased being read, that her fantasy was misunderstood as whimsy. She felt, however, that in 1979 a revival was due.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz, 1979.
127
It is...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Brittain, Vera, and Shirley Williams. Testament of Youth. Virago, 1978.
Brittain, Vera. The Dark Tide. Grant Richards, 1923.
Brittain, Vera. The Women at Oxford. George G. Harrap, 1960.
Brittain, Vera, editor. Vera Brittain’s Personal Letter to Peace-Lovers. V. Brittain, 1-169.
Brittain, Vera. Verses of a VAD. Erskine MacDonald, 1918.
Brittain, Vera. Women’s Work in Modern England. Noel Douglas, 1928.