Testament of Youth

The introduction to Brittain’s memoir is written by her biographer Mark Bostridge. He describes Brittain’s purpose as well as her goals in writing the memoir; as a pacifist, Brittain’s aim in writing is to discourage the glamorization of war and the notion of “heroism in the abstract” (ix). Bostridge continues to discuss the popularity of Testament of Youth upon its publication in 1933 and in the decades that followed. A television series as well as a film version of Brittain’s memoir cemented its reputation and renewed interest in the book, making Testament of Youth “the most widely read British autobiography of the First World War” (xi).

According to Bostridge, within months of Roland Leighton’s death, Brittain begins thinking about how to document her experience and that of her brother Edward and two other close friends who went to war. Brittain also writes and publishes poetry as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the war, and after the war, her first novel is also published. In 1922, six years after Leighton’s death, Brittain begins to re-read her diary, observing the potential in her earlier words to inspire a longer personal piece of writing. Brittain attempts fiction-writing at least two more times before reading the works of other autobiographers like Robert Graves and deciding that autobiography is her best option.