Testament of Youth

Testament of Youth is a memoir of British nurse and activist Vera Brittain (1893–1970), published in 1933. Brittain's memoir covers the years 1900 to 1925, and continues with Testament of Experience, published in 1957, and encompassing the years 1925 to 1950. Between these two books comes Testament of Friendship (published in 1940), which is essentially a memoir of Brittain's close colleague and friend Winifred Holtby. A final segment of memoir, to be called Testament of Faith or Testament of Time, was planned by Brittain but remained unfinished at her death. Testament of Youth has been acclaimed as a classic for its description of the impact of World War I on the lives of women and the middle-class civilian population of the United Kingdom. The book shows how the impact extended into the postwar years. It is also considered a classic in feminist literature for its depiction of a woman's pioneering struggle to forge an independent career in a society only grudgingly tolerant of educated women. Narrative In the foreword, Brittain describes how she originally intended to write of her experiences as a novel but was unable to achieve the necessary objective distance from her subject. She then tried to publish her original diary from the war years but with all names fictionalised. This too proved unworkable. Only then did she decide to write her personal story, putting her experiences in the wider historic and social context. Several critics have noted the cathartic process by which the memoir deals with her grief at the loss of young men close to her: brother Edward Brittain, her fiancé Roland Leighton, and her friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow. The narrative begins with Vera's plans to enter Somerville College, Oxford, and her romance with Roland Leighton, a friend of her brother Edward. Both were commissioned as officers early in World War I, and both were subsequently killed, as were several other members of their social circle.