Testament of Youth (Penguin Classics)
Giving a voice to a lost generation, this edition features a new introduction by Brittain’s biographer. Now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Hayley Atwell, and Taron Egerton
Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera Brittain’s elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war’s end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Suplement as a book that helped "both form and define the mood of its time," it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.
This edition features a new introduction by Brittain's biographer examining her struggles to write about her experiences and the book's reception in England and America.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera Brittain’s elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war’s end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Suplement as a book that helped "both form and define the mood of its time," it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.
This edition features a new introduction by Brittain's biographer examining her struggles to write about her experiences and the book's reception in England and America.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Community Reviews
Apparently I started reading this book on Independence Day. Interesting in like of this book's ultimate message: the futility of war and the importance of pursuing peace.
This book was a long slog -- the language was dense and I thought many sections could have been pruned considerably without damaging the integrity of the work -- but I ultimately loved it. I love this time period: Edwardian, WWI, and, to a lesser extent, the InterWar Years. I love the tragic nature of this engagement. It was started for inconsequential reasons and when it was over it seemed to hardly have mattered that it had been fought at all. In contrast to WWII which had the ultimate baddies of Hitler and fascism to defeat, WWI had no such villains. When I describe it to my students, the main cause that leaps to mind is that everybody is looking for a reason to fight. The reason ultimately is superficial and flimsy, but it didn't matter because genuinely people were just looking for a reason.
But what waste.
And therein lies the point of this book. The point of this book, to me, is for Vera, through her personal experiences, to show how truly idealistic and courageous the young men and women were who essentially went off to slaughter in the face of unworthy causes. How their deaths were a waste. How the war itself had an indelible impact on those who survived. How it is so difficult to carry on. I can't even imagine it. Vera lost her fiance, her brother, and two other close friends. Her entire social circle, really, was killed in the war. Basically for nothing. How infuriating and numbing and frustrating it must have been to understand that. And then to write about it years later. The narrative feels pretty detached throughout the whole book. She speaks of her passions without succumbing to passionate language and flowery imagery and metaphors. I think this is because it hurts too much to not be detached. How can it not? When she finally gets married at the end of the book, her reflections on the topic are mostly about how uneasy she feels. Will her fiance be killed before than can get married? How would Roland feel about this? What should she do with the weight of those killed in the war, with the weight of the war itself? How can she move forward? How can she balance the goals she found gave her life meaning after the war (a career in writing, lecturing, and political activity) with the domesticity and compromise of marriage? I feel her panic, I feel her pain. And I get why she has to write in an almost clinical way at times. I don't know if I could write it at all.
Ultimately, I don't think I would recommend this to many people. I think it's messages (anti-war, pro-feminism, pro-socialism) are noble and idealistic and excellent in this day and age when I have felt for so long like our world and its end are only a hair's breadth away. Despite these noble ends, I think that most people would be put off my its meandering pace, its clinical detachment, its dense language, and its paragraphs and paragraphs of seemingly useless, extra information. However, to those people who enjoy a nice, long, thorough history, a slow story, and the elegance and romance of a costume drama (particularly the Edwardian period) will be rewarded in this book.
Next, I plan to read [b:Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends|374390|Letters from a Lost Generation First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends|Mark Bostridge|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1348056542s/374390.jpg|364277] in order to get the full effect of the relationships. Can you believe this all started out of a desire to watch the movie because it had Colin Morgan in it? I love him. He's fantastic. But I was like, "Well, if there is a book I ought to read it first." Here I am, a more thorough human being for it. Thanks, Colin Morgan. Thanks, Vera Brittain. I appreciate you, Vera. I see you through the ages, and I appreciate not only the trials you went through but the time you took to write down and share those experiences. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Side note: My husband didn't realize this was non-fiction. When I was reading the part about the death of her fiance, I turned to him and I said, "Well, Roland finally died" and he goes, "Finally! I've been waiting for that to happen -- I was so tired of hearing about it!" Scandalized, I'm going into gory details to try and make him feel some sense of humanity about it, and he's laughing, and finally I go, "That's so mean! He was real and their love was real and I'm sad that you're acting this way!" And he finally says, "Wait... He was a real person? Oh.... sorry..." and had the most chagrined look on his face afterward. For about ten seconds, but still. And that's the last poignant thing about this book. It's real. These people were real. Their lives and deaths are recorded faithfully so that they might not have lived in vain and I find that a powerful reason to write and to read. So that our lives, even in death, can retain meaning.
Side, side note: How sad was Edward Brittain? They suspect now that he was gay and that his commanding officer found out about it and was going to have him court-martialed after the battle. Some speculate that Edward purposely put himself in the line of fire in order to avoid a court-martial. I don't really blame him. Homosexuality was still illegal in Britain at the time (and would be for decades) and he would face real, physical punishment upon returning to his home, as well as humiliation and a total loss of position, respect, and regard. I see how it would feel better to die in battle, a hero, respected and revered (if dead) than to return home to see everything in one's life shattered and ruined. Poor Edward. They say Vera never got over his death and that she asked to be buried with him because since he died a part of her soul had always remained on that Italian mountaintop where he was buried. So sad.
This book was a long slog -- the language was dense and I thought many sections could have been pruned considerably without damaging the integrity of the work -- but I ultimately loved it. I love this time period: Edwardian, WWI, and, to a lesser extent, the InterWar Years. I love the tragic nature of this engagement. It was started for inconsequential reasons and when it was over it seemed to hardly have mattered that it had been fought at all. In contrast to WWII which had the ultimate baddies of Hitler and fascism to defeat, WWI had no such villains. When I describe it to my students, the main cause that leaps to mind is that everybody is looking for a reason to fight. The reason ultimately is superficial and flimsy, but it didn't matter because genuinely people were just looking for a reason.
But what waste.
And therein lies the point of this book. The point of this book, to me, is for Vera, through her personal experiences, to show how truly idealistic and courageous the young men and women were who essentially went off to slaughter in the face of unworthy causes. How their deaths were a waste. How the war itself had an indelible impact on those who survived. How it is so difficult to carry on. I can't even imagine it. Vera lost her fiance, her brother, and two other close friends. Her entire social circle, really, was killed in the war. Basically for nothing. How infuriating and numbing and frustrating it must have been to understand that. And then to write about it years later. The narrative feels pretty detached throughout the whole book. She speaks of her passions without succumbing to passionate language and flowery imagery and metaphors. I think this is because it hurts too much to not be detached. How can it not? When she finally gets married at the end of the book, her reflections on the topic are mostly about how uneasy she feels. Will her fiance be killed before than can get married? How would Roland feel about this? What should she do with the weight of those killed in the war, with the weight of the war itself? How can she move forward? How can she balance the goals she found gave her life meaning after the war (a career in writing, lecturing, and political activity) with the domesticity and compromise of marriage? I feel her panic, I feel her pain. And I get why she has to write in an almost clinical way at times. I don't know if I could write it at all.
Ultimately, I don't think I would recommend this to many people. I think it's messages (anti-war, pro-feminism, pro-socialism) are noble and idealistic and excellent in this day and age when I have felt for so long like our world and its end are only a hair's breadth away. Despite these noble ends, I think that most people would be put off my its meandering pace, its clinical detachment, its dense language, and its paragraphs and paragraphs of seemingly useless, extra information. However, to those people who enjoy a nice, long, thorough history, a slow story, and the elegance and romance of a costume drama (particularly the Edwardian period) will be rewarded in this book.
Next, I plan to read [b:Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends|374390|Letters from a Lost Generation First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends|Mark Bostridge|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1348056542s/374390.jpg|364277] in order to get the full effect of the relationships. Can you believe this all started out of a desire to watch the movie because it had Colin Morgan in it? I love him. He's fantastic. But I was like, "Well, if there is a book I ought to read it first." Here I am, a more thorough human being for it. Thanks, Colin Morgan. Thanks, Vera Brittain. I appreciate you, Vera. I see you through the ages, and I appreciate not only the trials you went through but the time you took to write down and share those experiences. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Side note: My husband didn't realize this was non-fiction. When I was reading the part about the death of her fiance, I turned to him and I said, "Well, Roland finally died" and he goes, "Finally! I've been waiting for that to happen -- I was so tired of hearing about it!" Scandalized, I'm going into gory details to try and make him feel some sense of humanity about it, and he's laughing, and finally I go, "That's so mean! He was real and their love was real and I'm sad that you're acting this way!" And he finally says, "Wait... He was a real person? Oh.... sorry..." and had the most chagrined look on his face afterward. For about ten seconds, but still. And that's the last poignant thing about this book. It's real. These people were real. Their lives and deaths are recorded faithfully so that they might not have lived in vain and I find that a powerful reason to write and to read. So that our lives, even in death, can retain meaning.
Side, side note: How sad was Edward Brittain? They suspect now that he was gay and that his commanding officer found out about it and was going to have him court-martialed after the battle. Some speculate that Edward purposely put himself in the line of fire in order to avoid a court-martial. I don't really blame him. Homosexuality was still illegal in Britain at the time (and would be for decades) and he would face real, physical punishment upon returning to his home, as well as humiliation and a total loss of position, respect, and regard. I see how it would feel better to die in battle, a hero, respected and revered (if dead) than to return home to see everything in one's life shattered and ruined. Poor Edward. They say Vera never got over his death and that she asked to be buried with him because since he died a part of her soul had always remained on that Italian mountaintop where he was buried. So sad.
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