We That Were Young (Women & Peace)

Rathbone, Irene

ISBN 10: 1558610014 ISBN 13: 9781558610019

Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1993

Synopsis

This fierce anti-war novel by Irene Rathbone (1892-1980) is told from the perspective of a cultured former suffragist and several of her friends—young women who work at rest camps just behind the lines in France and as nurses of the severely wounded in hospitals in London. When Joan loses both her brother and lover to the war, in anger at the enemy she volunteers for work in a munitions plant, but by the end, she is a confirmed pacifist.

About this title

About the Author

Irene Rathbone (1892-1980) is the author of seven other novels.

Reviews

First published in 1932 to lukewarm reviews, this novel chronicles the war work of several young British women during World War I. Joan, Betty, Barbara, and Pamela work in YMCA canteens in France and in military hospitals and munitions factories at home. The individual characters themselves are not especially memorable, but the exhausting day-to-day details of their lives add up to vivid impressions of friendship, despair, loss of idealism, and, finally, strong antiwar sentiments. Lynn Knight's introduction and Jane Marcus's afterword provide historic and literary framework for the novel. More important for its social and historic context than for its literary value, this work is very much in the tradition of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth .
- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1558610014
• ISBN 13: 9781558610019
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 528