The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

IN 1914, fresh from the provinces and still in her teens, Miss Vera Brittain was admitted to Somerville College, Oxford. In 1933, and in mid-life, she has come to be an established journalist and lecturer, a member of the Labor Party, an ex-official of the League of Nations Union, the author of two novels, the mother of two children, and the wife of a distinguished political scientist. But in the years between these two peaks Miss Brittain suffered (in common with most of the young women in 1914) the fate of a lost generation. She lost her fiancé and then her only brother in France; she sought solace by serving as a volunteer nurse in London, Malta, and France; she saw her world come down in chaos.