Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby

Vera Brittain

Mar 2012 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

WRITTEN WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARK BOSTRIDGE

In her bestselling first volume of autobiography, Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain passionately recorded the agonising years of the First World War, lamenting the destruction of a generation which for her included those she most dearly loved - her lover, her brother and her closest friends.

In Testament of Friendship Brittain tells the story of the woman who helped her survive those tragic years - the writer Winifred Holtby. They met at Somerville College, Oxford, immediately after the war. Their friendship continued through Vera's marriage and their separate but parallel writing careers until Winifred's untimely death at the age of thirty-seven. When she died, her fame as a writer was about to reach its peak with the publication of her greatest novel, South Riding.

A moving record of a friendship between two women of courage, determination and intelligence and a wonderful portrait of a lifelong love. Testament of Friendship now takes its rightful place as a Virago Modern Classic.

About the author

Vera Brittain was born in 1893, and grew up in provincial comfort in Macclesfield and Buxton. In 1914, just as war was breaking out, she won an exhibition to Somerville College, Oxford, interrupting her studies the following year to enlist as a VAD nurse. She became one of the best-loved writers of her time with the publication, in 1933, of her passionate record of a lost generation, Testament of Youth. She wrote twenty-nine books in all, and was a prolific lecturer and journalist, who devoted much of her energy to the causes of peace and feminism. Vera Brittain died in 1970. The authorised biography, Vera Brittain: A Life (1995) by Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge is published by Virago Press.