Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6023 in Books
• Published on: 1933-01-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1914 Vera Brittain was 21 years old, and an undergraduate student at Somerville College, Oxford. When war broke out in August of that year, Brittain "temporarily" disrupted her studies to enrol as a volunteer nurse, nursing casualties both in England and on the Western Front. The next four years were to cause a deep rupture in Brittain's life, as she witnessed not only the horrors of war first hand, but also experienced the quadruple loss of her fiancé, her brother, and two close friends. Testament of Youth is a powerfully written, unsentimental memoir which has continued to move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933. Brittain, a pacifist since her First World War experiences, prefaces the book with a fairy tale, in which Catherine, the heroine, encounters a fairy godmother and is given the choice of having either a happy youth or a happy old age. She selects the latter and so her fate is determined: "Now this woman," warns the tale, "was the destiny of poor Catherine." And we find as we delve deeper into the book that she was the destiny of poor Vera too.

Sunday Times
" Miss Brittain has written a book which stands alone among books written by women about the war."

Guardian, August 30, 2003
" Today, Testament is firmly enshrined in the canon of the literature of the first world war.."

Customer Reviews

utterly heartbreaking; one woman's war
My mother having pressed me to read this book, I finally got round to it early this year. Thank God I did.

I cannot begin to put into words how much this book touched me. Vera Brittan must be an inspiration to all women; a strong and determined character who, despite losing almost everything to the War, did not give up. Vera Brittan was a young, ambitious girl growing up pre-war with aspirations to go to University (something uncommon for the day.) She succeeded in getting into Oxford to study English. Then the War came crashing into her life, and Vera's brother and friends get called up to fight. She herself finds her place, working as a nurse first in London, then abroad. Vera Brittan lost so much to this horrific War and yet still found the strength to write about her experiences. This is no fiction, but a true, heartbreaking story of one woman's war.

A most poignant and haunting read, Vera Brittan's tragic story of love, family, duty and growing up will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

An important memoir of the Great War and its aftermath
In 1929 Vera Brittain ( 1993- 1970) began using her extensive diaries and correspondence to start writing her auto-biographical epic from 1913-1925, which was published in 1933. At the time Brittain was a part time lecturer for supporters of the League of Nations, a journalist, and had written two novels which had not been particularly well received. Ambitious and a feminist, Brittain seemed determined to succeed at something, and her greatest achievement has been in autobiography.

The book is well written : Brittain depicts her own life, frustrations, personal losses , near breakdown and subsequent attempts at building new life and friendships after the Great War in an endearing manner. Her humanitarianism, her social observations, the fact that she reminded the world how those people away from direct military action, (especially women and men to old to fight) suffered along with the men who were maimed, traumatised, or killed . Brittain also nurses enemy soldiers and also visited Germany after the War, and her compassion extended to the German people. The book also clearly documents how women's lives changed during this time period.

`Testament of Youth' is not great literary fiction, compared with Siegfried Sassoon' Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'. The book has its opponents, one unkind critic referred to Brittain as the `princess of self-pity'. The book is centred around her own suffering and personal losses ( of fiancé, friends, brother), though millions of other people experienced great levels of bereavement at this time. Whether she has the right to be heralded as the `voice' of a generation in this respect is open to question. Certainly Brittain's supporters will point out that the book's success was due to a large number of her contemporaries feeling at least some affinity with her suffering.

Further research has suggested that her brother Edward killed in 1918, may have taken his own life or deliberately exposed himself to enemy fire so as to avoid the disgrace of a court martial ( see `Vera Brittain A life' , Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge 1995). In `Testament of Youth' this is not disclosed to the reader, and one wonders if other amendments have been made though it also to fair say that the book's detractors have found few factual errors in the work.

Above all `Testament of Youth' has undergone a revival , after its transatlantic success in the 1930's, with a new generation of readers as from the late 1970's, because its' vision of the Great War-as a senseless carnage- is now popular. The book was re-published by Virago, the feminist publishing house, whose mission was to showcase work by women authors. It's revival coincided with a new wave of feminist anti-militarism. It is easily the most cited Great War memoir written by a woman. Moreover, the tale of a survivor such as Vera Brittain who witnesses great tragedy but by the end of the book in 1925 has found love again, has great contemporary appeal. Ultimately Vera Brittain has ensured that her perception of the Great War was known to millions of people and the names of those who close to her who perished or also suffered great loss, have been remembered,which must make it a success

The book that changed my life
I first read this book when I was about 15 and it had such a remarkable effect on my life that 25 years later I still return to it again and again. It encapsulates so much of the period; the desperate need to get into higher education, the horror of war and its aftermath, how to make sense of it all and finally the joy of love and of friendship. Try Chronicles of Youth as well, the diaries on which she based the book.