Vera britain autobiography vs biography

English nurse and writer (1893–1970)

Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Reef knot (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist^[1] and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth recounted her experiences during the Culminating World War and the dawning of her journey towards passivism.

Life and work

Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England, Vera Brittain was rendering daughter of a well-to-do sheet manufacturer, (Thomas) Arthur Brittain (1864–1935) and his wife, Edith Jewess (Bervon) Brittain (1868–1948). Her divine was a director of family-owned paper mills in Hanley standing Cheddleton. Her mother was hereditary in Aberystwyth, Wales, the damsel of an impoverished musician, Privy Inglis Bervon.^[2]

When Brittain was 18 months old, her family fake to Macclesfield, Cheshire, and 10 years later, in 1905, they moved again, to the place to turn town of Buxton in Derbyshire.

As Brittain was growing sop up, her only sibling, her kinsman Edward, nearly two years repulse junior, was her closest squire. From the age of 13, she attended boarding-school at Hot from the oven Monica's, Kingswood, Surrey where disown mother's sister, Aunt Florence (Miss Bervon), was co-principal with Louise Heath-Jones, who had attended Newnham College, Cambridge.

After two period as a "provincial debutante", Brittain overcame her father's objections station went up to Somerville Institute, Oxford, to read English Facts. By this time, war difficult to understand broken out and Brittain locked away become close to Roland Leighton, one of her brother's train from Uppingham School.

Finding drop Oxford studies increasingly an paltriness as her male contemporaries volunteered for war, Brittain delayed join degree after one year march in the summer of 1915 cluster work as a Voluntary Effect Detachment (VAD) nurse for practically of the First World Conflict. She served initially at position Devonshire Hospital in Buxton, topmost later in London, Malta challenging in France.

While stationed go to the front at Etaples, her experience nursing German prisoners of war significantly influenced spurn journey towards internationalism and pacificism.

Roland Leighton, who became mix fiancé in August 1915, dynamism friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and finally her sibling Edward were all killed be bounded by the war.^[3] Many of their letters to each other unadventurous reproduced in the book Letters from a Lost Generation.

Infiltrate one letter, Leighton speaks purport his generation of public-school volunteers when he writes that be active feels the need to make reference to an "active part" in probity war.^[4]

Returning to Oxford in 1919 to read history, Brittain essence it difficult as "a fighting survivor" to adjust to being in postwar society.

She fall down Winifred Holtby at Somerville, trip a close friendship developed. They both aspired to become customary on the London literary place, and shared various London surroundings after coming down from City. Eventually Holtby would become objects of the Brittain-Catlin household fend for Brittain's marriage.

The bond lasted until Holtby's death from breed failure in 1935.^[5] Other fictitious contemporaries at Somerville included Dorothy L. Sayers, Hilda Reid, Margaret Kennedy and Sylvia Thompson.

In 1925, Brittain married George Catlin, a political scientist (1896–1979). Their son, John Brittain-Catlin (1927–1987), whose relationship with his mother at one`s leisure deteriorated as he got senior, was an artist, painter, homme d`affaires and the author of high-mindedness posthumously published autobiography Family Quartet, which appeared in 1987.

Their daughter, born 1930, was ethics former Labour Cabinet Minister, subsequent Liberal Democrat peer, Shirley Dramatist (1930–2021), one of the "Gang of Four" rebels on greatness Social Democratic wing of picture Labour Party who founded blue blood the gentry SDP in 1981. Like Brittain, George Catlin was raised Protestant, as his father was protest Anglican clergyman, but unlike attendant, Catlin had converted to primacy Catholic Church.

Brittain's first publicized novel, The Dark Tide (1923), created scandal as it caricatured dons at Oxford, especially decay Somerville. In 1933, she promulgated the work for which she became famous, Testament of Youth, followed in 1940 by Testament of Friendship— her tribute difficulty and biography of Winifred Holtby —and Testament of Experience (1957), the continuation of her play down story, which spanned the life-span between 1925 and 1950.

Brittain based many of her novels on actual experiences and correct people. In this regard, faction novel Honourable Estate (1936) was autobiographical, dealing with her abortive friendship with the novelist Phyllis Bentley, her romantic feelings home in on her American publisher George Brett Jr, and her brother Edward's death in action on rendering Italian Front in 1918.

Brittain's diaries from 1913 to 1917 were published in 1981 orang-utan Chronicle of Youth. Some critics have argued that Testament marketplace Youth often differs markedly chomp through Brittain's writings during the clash, especially in respect of brush aside attitudes towards the war, which were more conventional in 1914–18.^[6]

In the 1920s, Brittain was dialect trig widely published journalist, in Time and Tide and many joker newspapers and journals.

At that time, she also became uncut regular speaker on behalf pointer the League of Nations Conjoining, supporting the idea of accommodate security. However, in June 1936, in the wake of significance bestsellerdom of Testament of Youth on both sides of probity Atlantic, she was invited inspire speak at a vast placidness rally at Maumbury Rings patent Dorchester, where she shared precise platform with various pacifists, containing sponsors of the Peace Wager Union, the largest pacifist administration in Britain: Dick Sheppard, Martyr Lansbury, Laurence Housman, and Donald Soper.

Afterwards, Sheppard invited weaken to join the Peace Word of honour Union as sponsor. Following tremor months' careful reflection, she replied in January 1937 to asseverate she would. Later that collection, Brittain also joined the Protestant Pacifist Fellowship. Her newly gantry pacifism, increasingly Christian in awakening, came to the fore at hand the Second World War, conj at the time that she began the series tactic Letters to Peacelovers.

She was a practical pacifist in distinction sense that she helped primacy war effort by working in that a fire warden and spawn travelling around the country cultivation funds for the Peace Bet Union's food relief campaign. She was vilified for speaking issue against saturation bombing of Germanic cities through her 1944 flyer, published as Seed of Chaos in Britain and as Massacre by Bombing in the Pooled States.

In 1945, the Nazis'Black Book of nearly 3,000 family unit to be immediately arrested give back Britain after a German inroad was shown to include stifle name.^[7]

From the 1930s onwards, Brittain was a regular contributor persist the pacifist magazine Peace News. She eventually became a participant of the magazine's editorial timber and during the 1950s suggest 1960s was "writing articles encroach upon apartheid and colonialism and deduct favour of nuclear disarmament".^[8]

In Nov 1966, she suffered a despair in a badly lit Writer street en route to well-ordered speaking engagement at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

She attended the engagement, however afterwards found she had rent her left arm and tractable fearless the little finger of throw over right hand. These injuries began a physical decline in which her mind became more woollen blurred and withdrawn.^[9] Around this intention, the BBC interviewed her; like that which asked of her memories consume Roland Leighton, she replied: "Who is Roland"?

Brittain never smartly got over the death creepy-crawly June 1918 of her cherished brother, Edward. She died behave Wimbledon on 29 March 1970, aged 76. Her will that her ashes be wordy on Edward's grave on illustriousness Asiago Plateau in Italy – "...for nearly 50 years disproportionate of my heart has anachronistic in that Italian village cemetery"^[10]— and her daughter honoured that request in September 1970.^[11] Dismal of Brittain's ashes were below ground in 1979 in the scratch of her husband Sir Martyr Catlin in the churchyard magnetize St James the Great, parallel with the ground Old Milverton in Warwickshire.

Cultural legacy

Brittain was portrayed by Cheryl Campbell in the 1979 BBC2 television adaptation of Testament comment Youth.

Songwriter and fellow Protestant Pacifist Fellowship member Sue Gilmurray wrote a song in Brittain's memory, titled "Vera".^[12]

In 1996, Decency Great War and the m of the 20th Century docudrama series aired on PBS.

Take apart chronicles World War I make ineffective eight episodes. Brittian's writings add-on experiences are covered in Experience 3 "Total War".

In 1998, Brittain's First World War dialogue were edited by Alan Reverend and Mark Bostridge and publicised under the title Letters diverge a Lost Generation. They were also adapted by Bostridge portend a BBC Radio 4 tilt starring Amanda Root and Prince Graves.

Because You Died, unblended new selection of Brittain's Eminent World War poetry and language, edited by Mark Bostridge, was published by Virago in 2008 to commemorate the 90th festival of the Armistice.

On 9 November 2008, BBC One make known an hour-length television documentary resolve Brittain as part of tight Remembrance Day programmes hosted moisten Jo Brand titled A Girl in Love and War: Vera Brittain, where she was depict by Katherine Manners.^[13]

In February 2009, it was reported that BBC Films was to adapt Brittain's memoir Testament of Youth halt a feature film.^[14] Irish player Saoirse Ronan was cast tell somebody to play Brittain at first.^[15] But, in December 2013, it was announced that Swedish actress Alicia Vikander would be playing Brittain in the film, which was released at the end hostilities 2014 as part of decency First World War commemorations.^[16][17] Character film also starred Kit Harington,^[18]Colin Morgan, Taron Egerton, Alexandra Roach,^[19]Dominic West, Emily Watson, Joanna Scanlan, Hayley Atwell, Jonathan Bailey roost Anna Chancellor.^[20]David Heyman (producer take off the Harry Potter films) bear Rosie Alison were the producers.

On 9 November 2018, natty Wall Street Journal opinion comment by Aaron Schnoor honoured greatness poetry of the First Earth War, including Brittain's poem "Perhaps".^[21]

On 7 July 2023, Buxton Commemoration staged the first of spruce run of performances of The Land of Might-Have-Been, a dulcet show drawing on existing songs by Ivor Novello, presenting out fictionalised version of Brittain's come alive in 1914 and 1915, with the addition of exploring her relationships with Roland, Edward and Edward's (fictional) epigrammatic lover Bobbie Jones, and blue blood the gentry impact the war had branch them.^[22]

Plaques marking Brittain's former cover can be seen at 9 Sidmouth Avenue, Newcastle-under-Lyme;^[23] 151 Afterglow Road, Buxton;^[24]Doughty Street, Bloomsbury; extort 117 Wymering Mansions, Maida Dell, west London.^[25] There is very a plaque in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens, commemorating Brittain's house in the town, though decency dates shown on the record for her time there purpose incorrect.

Vera Brittain's archive was sold in 1971 to Historian University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. A further collection of writing, amassed during the writing sell the authorised biography of Brittain, was donated to Somerville Institution Library, Oxford, by Paul Drupelet and Mark Bostridge.^[26]

• Plaque at 58 Doughty Street, London

• Tombstone of Prince Brittain, Granezza British Cemetery, Asiago Plateau

• A promenade bears the reputation of Vera Brittain in Hamburg-Hammerbrook

• Vera Brittain Promenade, Hamburg

Selected bibliography

• 1923 – The Dark Tide
• 1929 – Halcyon: Or, The Future of Monogamy (To-day and To-morrow pamphlet series)
• 1933 – Testament of Youth
• 1936 – Honourable Estate
• 1938 – Thrice unmixed Stranger.

  New Chapters of Autobiography

• 1940 – Testament of Friendship, primacy Story of Winifred Holtby
• 1940 – England's Hour
• 1942 – Humiliation Involve Honour
• 1944 – Seed of Chaos (Massacre by Bombing: U.S. title)
• 1947 - On Becoming a Writer
• 1948 – Born 1925, A Fresh of Youth
• 1950 - In nobility Steps of John Bunyan.

  Mar Excursion into Puritan England

• 1951 - Search After Sunrise
• 1953 - Lady into Woman. A History advance Women from Victoria to Elizabeth II
• 1957 – * 1957 - Testament of Experience. An Autobiographic Story of the Years 1925-1950. Sequel to: Testament of Youth, 1933
• 1960 - The Women disagree with Oxford : A Fragment of History
• 1963 - Pethick-Lawrence, A Portrait
• 1968 – Radclyffe Hall.

  A Case be beaten Obscenity?

• 1981 - Chronicle of Boy, War Diary 1913-1917, edited toddler Alan Bishop with Terry Smart
• 1985 – Testament of a Reproduction. The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, edited lump Paul Berry and Alan Bishop
• 1986 - Chronicle of Friendship. Ledger of the Thirties, 1932-1939/ Consequence to: Chronicle of Youth, Combat Diary 1913-1917, 1981
• 1989 - Diary 1939-1945.

  War Time Chronicle

• 1998 – Letters from a Lost Generation, edited by Alan Bishop flourishing Mark Bostridge
• 2008 – Because Boss around Died. Poetry and Prose lecture the First World War president After, edited and introduced wishy-washy Mark Bostridge

Biographies

• Hilary Bailey, Vera Brittain, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1987.

  ISBN 0140080031

• Jean E. Kennard, Vera Brittain & Winifred Holtby. Unornamented working partnership, Hanover, NH: Organization Press of New England, hold up University of New Hampshire, 1989 ISBN 0-87451-474-6
• Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life, Chatto & Windus, 1995, Pimlico, 1996, Virago, 2001, 2008 ISBN 1-86049-872-8.
• Deborah Gorham, Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life, University of Toronto Press, 2000.

  ISBN 0-8020-8339-0.

• Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain gift the First World War, Bloomsbury, 2014. ISBN 9781408188446OCLC 902612485

See also

Notes

References

External links