Letters from a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends
Letters from a Lost Generation: The First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends : Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow Vera Brittain, Alan Bishop, Mark Bostridge,
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
ISBN: 1555533795
Edition: Hardcover; 1999-03-15
Summary:
The events set in motion by the outbreak of the First World War in
1914 changed many lives irrevocably. For Vera Brittain, an Oxford
undergraduate who left her studies to volunteer as a nurse in
military hospitals in England and France, the war was a shattering
experience; she not only witnessed the horrors inflicted by combat
through her work, but she lost the four men closest to her at that
time--her fiancé, Roland Leighton, brother Edward, and two
close friends, Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Nicholson, who all died on
the battlefield. Letters from a Lost Generation, a collection of
previously unpublished correspondence between Brittain and these
young men--all public schoolboys at the start of the war--chronicles
her relationship with them, and reveals "the old lie," the idealized
glory of patriotic duty that was soon overtaken by the grim reality
of the Flanders trenches. The letters are lively, dramatic, immediate
and, despite the awfulness of war, curiously optimistic: "Somehow I
feel the end is not destined to be here and now. We have not
fulfilled ourselves--and someday we shall live our roseate poem
through," wrote Vera in one of her last letters to Roland in December
1915, just days before he was killed by a sniper's bullet. Following
his death, and later those of their mutual friends Victor and
Geoffrey, Vera's letters take on a new, raw intensity as she
concentrates all her emotions on her brother--a hero awarded the
Military Cross--until his death on the Italian Front in June 1918.
These letters formed the basis of Vera Brittain's remarkable
autobiography, Testament of Youth, and vividly bring to life the
voices of the lost generation whose words threaten to be lost forever
as the First World War recedes even further from living memory.
--Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.uk
Click on a subject to see other books listed with the same
subject or to drill down into components of the subject -- such as
geographical locations, dates and so on.
We query many merchants so that you can instantly
compare prices and
availability. You can even check historic prices and subscribe
for notifications. For a manual check, clicking on a link will open a
new window with a search for this book on the merchant's site of your
choice.
