Vera Brittain Biography and List of Works

British pacifist, feminist, poet, and novelist, whose novels are largely autobiographical. Her best-known work is TESTAMENT OF YOUTH (1933).

Vera Brittain was born at Newcastle under Lyme, Straffordshire, the daughter of a wealthy paper manufacturer, Thomas Brittain, and the former Edith Bervan. She was educated at St Monica's School, and, despite parental opposition, also at Somerville College, Oxford.

During World War I Brittain left Somerville temporarily and served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Her fiancé, Roland Leighton, was killed in action during the war. Her experiences turned Brittain into a convicted pacifist, who became an active member of various peace movements in both England and the United States.

After the war she worked as a teacher in Oxford and in 1922 moved to London, devoting herself to writing. Between 1921 and 1925 Brittain travelled extensively throughout Europe. Her journeys included visits to the Rhineland, the Ruhr, and Cologne during the post-war occupation of Germany.

In 1925 Brittain married the political scientist George C.G.Catlin (1896-1979), who was later appointed professor of politics at Cornell University and knighted in 1970. Soon after their marriage they went to the United States and lived for a year in Ithaca, New York.

While George Caitlin spent a great amount time in the United States, working at Cornell, Brittain remained in England. She developed a close friendship with the novelist and an ardent feminist Winifred Holtby (1898-1935), whom she had met in Oxford. Holtby had also served during World War I in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. They settled in 1922 in a flat in London as aspiring writers. Holtby's novel Anderby Wold appeared in 1923. Her last novel, South Riding (1936), is set in Yorkshire, and tells the story of enterprising headmistress Sarah Burton.

In 1923 Brittain published her first novel, THE DARK TIDE, an account of life in Oxford, and the sexism she encountered their, in her early struggles as a woman to achieve an education. It provoked a storm of protests. Influenced by the South African writer Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), her wartime experiences and marriage to George Caitlin are recounted in Testament of Youth. The book was an immediate bestseller and has gained status as an important feminist text.

Brittain joined the Peace Pledge Union of Canon Dick Sheppard, and fought for peace during World War II, attacking, in SEED OF CHAOS (1944), the saturation bombing of Germany. The book encountered great hostility both in Britain and America.

Although Brittain wrote several volumes of poetry and fiction, she is principally remembered for Testament of Friendship (1940), a memorial to Winifred Holtby, and TESTAMENT OF EXPERIENCE (1957), a companion to the early autobiography, which covers the years 1925-50. Her other books include BORN 1925, a family saga dealing with the responses of two generations to World War II, LADY INTO WOMAN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN FROM VICTORIA TO ELISABETH II (1953), RADCLYFFE HALL: A CASE OF OBSCENITY? (1968), which defends Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. Brittain's diaries written between 1913 and 1917 have been published under the title CHRONICLE OF YOUTH (1981).

Vera Brittain was a Honorary Life President of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, a vice-president of the National Peace Council, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She died in London on March 29, 1970. Her daughter, Shirley Williams, was a prominent Labour Party politician cabinet minister in the 1960. She co-founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981 and was its president from1982-88.

For further reading: On Second Thought by J. Gray (1946); The Vera Brittain Archive in McMaster University Library by T. Smart et al. (1977); Feminist Theorists by M. Mellown (1983); Vera Brittain by G. Handley-Taylor and J.M. Dockeray (1983); Between Ourselves, ed. by K. Payne (1984); Family Quartet by J. Catlin (1987); Vera Brittain. The Story of the Woman Who Wrote Testament of Youth by H. Bailey (1987); Eva Brittain and Winifred Holtby by J.E. Kenard (1989).

VERSES, (1918)
OXFORD POETRY, (1918)
THE DARK TIDE, (1923)
ANDERBY WOLD, (1923)
NOT WITHOUT HONOUR, (1924)
WOMEN'S WORK IN MODERN ENGLAND, (1928)
HALCYON, OR, THE FUTURE OF MONOGAMY, (1929)
POOR CAROLINE, (1931)
TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, (1933)
POEMS OF THE WAR AND AFTER, (1934)
SOUTH RIDING, (1936)
HONOURABLE ESTATE, (1936)
LETTERS TO A FRIEND, (1937)
PAVEMENTS AT ANDERBY, BY WINIFRED HOLTBY, (1938)
THRICE STRNGER, (1938)
TESTAMENT OF FRIENDSHIP, (1940)
WAR-TIME LETETRS TO PEACE LOVERS, (1940)
ENGLAND'S HOUR, (1940)
ACCOUNT RENDERED, (1944)
SEED OF CHAOS, (1944)
ABOVE ALL NATIONS, (1945)
FRIENDSHIP, (1945)
SEARCH AFTER SUNRISE, (1945)
ON BECOMING A WRITER, (1947)
BORN, (1924)
VALIANT PILGRIM, (1950)
SEARCH AFTER SUNRISE, (1951)
THE STORY OF ST. MARTIN'S, (1951)
LADY INTO WOMAN, (1953)
TESTAMENT OF EXPERIENCE, (1957)
LONG SHADOWS, (1958)
THE WOMEN AT OXFORD, (1960)
SELECTED LETTERS OF WINIFRED HOLTBY AND VERA BRITTAIN, (1960)
PETHICK-LAWRENCE, (1963)
THE REBEL PASSION, (1964)
ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY, (1965)
ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY, (1965)
RADCLYFFE HALL: A CASE OF OBSCENITY?, (1968)
CHRONICLE OF YOUTH, (1981)
TESTAMENT OF PEACE LOVER, (1988)
TESTAMENT OF A GENERATION, (1988)
WARTIME CHRONICLE, (1989)