Testament of Youth

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Testament of Youth appeared in 1933 as the first part of a series of autobiographical works by the British feminist Vera Brittain (1893-1970); it covers the years 1900–1925.

Brittain continued her autobiography with Testament of Experience (1957), which spanned the years 1925-1950. In between, she published the Testament of Friendship in 1940 , which, also autobiographical, is essentially a biography of Winifred Holtby, a close friend and colleague of Brittain's. Brittain also planned a final part of her autobiography under the title 'Testament of Faith' or 'Testament of Time'; However, this remained unfinished.

Brittain describes in her autobiography Testament of Youth the impact that World War I had on the lives of women, the British civilian population and the post-war period. Because of these descriptions and the portrayal of an independent, hard-fighting pioneer, the Testament of Youth has been hailed as a classic of feminist literature.

In the foreword Brittain describes how she originally wanted to put her experiences on paper as a novel, but was unable to achieve the necessary objective distance from the topic. Then she tried to publish her original diary from the war years with alienated names. But even this turned out to be impracticable. Only then did she decide to write her own personal story and place her own experiences in a larger historical and social context. Several reviewers noted the purification process as she wrote, addressing her grief.

The narrative begins with Vera's plans to enroll at the University of Oxford and her romance with Roland Leighton, a friend of her brother Edward. Both became officers at an early age, and both were killed during the war, as were other people in their social circle.

The main topic of the book is Vera's work as a nurse in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment). In this capacity, she looked after the wounded in London, Malta and Étaples . Completely disaffected, she returned to Somerville College in Oxford after the war ended and graduated with a bachelor's degree . The book also shows the beginning of her career as a journalist for Time and Tide magazine and her lecture work for the League of Nations . She visits the graves of her brother Edward in Italy and her fiancé Roland in France. Together with Winifred Holtby, she visited the defeated and occupied areas of Germany and Austria in 1923.

The book concludes with her meeting with her husband, the politician George Catlin, and their subsequent marriage in 1925.

The diaries on which the book is partially based ( Chronicle of Youth ) were edited by Alan Bishop and published in 1981. In 1998, the wartime letters Brittain used for her autobiography were also edited by Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge. They became a huge success under the title Letters from a Lost Generation .

Testament of Youth was implemented quite successfully in 1979 by BBC Two with Cheryl Campbell in the lead role as a TV series (German title: Testament einer Jugend ). In 2014 a film adaptation produced by the BBC was released , in which Brittain's biographer Mark Bostridge was also involved.

Release history

German edition

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Redendes Bild, plastisches Wort , Zeit Online TV Criticism, February 13, 1981, accessed on October 17, 2009