readingthethings's review against another edition
4.0
"Life is so short," she wrote. "The menace of horror is over us all so completely; that to waste time on self-pity seems extremely unintelligent."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
˳✧༚˚ In a biography of twentieth century British author [a:Winifred Holtby|67319|Winifred Holtby|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1595983552p2/67319.jpg], Marion Shaw covers basically the same ground Vera Brittain covered in [b:Testament of Friendship|13616215|Testament of Friendship|Vera Brittain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335339764l/13616215._SY75_.jpg|821114], but from a more distant and objective perspective. Holtby is currently remembered for her last novel South Riding & for her friendship with Vera Brittain, but she actually wrote several novels, articles, poems, and pamphlets (& a play), & directed Time & Tide (a left-wing feminist magazine of the 1920s through the mid-1980s) before her death. She was committed to feminism, pacifism, socialism, and anti-racism and was very well known and respected in England in the 1930s.
Vera Brittain's biography of Winifred Holtby (Testament of Friendship, which is one of my absolute favorite books) introduces Holtby as a vital half of an experiment in female friendship leading directly to ideal womanhood. Brittain married but maintained her deep friendship with Holtby rather than sacrificing it to the traditional precedence society gives to marriage, and so through Holtby's companionship was made more whole and enriched. Holtby, meanwhile, was able to remain independent while enjoying the company of Brittain's family & home, where she was treated as a valued part of the familial group. According to Marian Shaw, Brittain's book fails to show how Holtby's independence made her successful beyond Brittan's world & transformed the meaning of the word "spinster." Brittain's book also doesn't fully convey how fun Holtby was away from Brittain, & how much people loved to spend time with her. Shaw quotes author Phyllis Bentley (whom I hope to read!) as having once said of Holtby, "I envied [her] with all my heart. Tall and fair and handsome... that lovely speaking voice, that precision of English, that flat in London, that post on Time and Tide, those interesting well-cut clothes, that Oxford degree."
Holtby's life defied the conventional feminine structure: she never married or had a family of her own, nor did she leave much detailed textual evidence behind to document her personal life. She focused more on her service to the world, her friends, & her writing. Hers was very much a life of thought & doing for others. She said of herself, "The things that happen to my friends are the only things worth recording." Late in her life she said, "I never feel I've really had a life of my own. My existence seems to me like a clear stream which has simply reflected other people's stories and problems." As a sort of homage to this feeling, Shaw structures her biography on Holtby as a series of chapters covering her relationship with specific people: Alice Holtby (her mother, who was a conservative woman who couldn't understand Holtby's liberal bent but encouraged her writing from the start); the poet Harry Pearson (whom Holtby knew for years & appears to have loved romantically until her death); Jean McWilliam (her commanding officer during the Great War & a lifelong friend); Vera Brittain (whom she met as a History major at Oxford & developed a deep friendship with, commiserating over their writing and their efforts to change the world); Margaret Rhondda, businesswoman, suffragist & founder of Time & Tide, who exposed Holtby to varied professional women which culminated in her book [b:Women and a Changing Civilization|6664305|Women and a Changing Civilization|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594299289l/6664305._SY75_.jpg|6859120], & who provided Holtby a professional platform to write on politics alongside such people as Leonard Woolf & H.G. Wells; William Ballinger, who involved Holtby in the British Labour Party's work in South Africa; George Catlin, political scientist & husband of Vera Brittain, who often collaborated with Holtby to keep Brittain feeling safe & loved in a world that had hurt her deeply; and Virginia Woolf, the famous twentieth century feminist author who gave Holtby first rights to cover her life in a biography.
Holtby's ill health in her youth is discussed in this book, including a bout of scarlet fever which would ultimately lead to her early death. Before that, though, the early death of her sister Grace is covered, as is the death of her father. Her relationship with her mother is given a lot of coverage. Shaw discusses at length Alice Holtby's strong aversion to having South Riding published after Holtby's death (fearing it might reflect on her badly because it was inspired by her work) & Vera Brittain's astonished decision as Holtby's literary executor to see that it was published nonetheless. Holtby's deep friendship with Brittain, her anguished response to losing Brittain to marriage. She kept her sadness private rather than burdening Brittain, and ultimately chose to go to South Africa to be of use rather than mourn. "In June Vera will go, and I shall be on my own again. No one will ever know what I owe to her for these five years; but now comes the choice again -- how shall I live? One thing I am determined on, that I will not fall into the common error of circumstantial victimization." - Winifred Holtby, October 1924 to Jean McWilliam, on the absence of Vera's companionship after her marriage.
The chapter on Holtby's efforts in South Africa left me completely confused. Lots of references are made to unions and initialed organizations in South Africa, and I didn't know what Shaw was talking about. The basic gist (I think?) is that Holtby became part of a Labour Party effort to reform in South Africa by unionizing black workers. It seems much of her effort was in financial and emotional contributions. I couldn't get a fix on how exactly she contributed (I found the delivery QUITE DENSE), but Ballinger was involved as well as trade unions. Of Ballinger, Holtby said to Jean McWilliam in 1928, "He's a fine man. He has stuck out for six years on uncertain pay, against terrific discouragement and with hostility and misunderstanding all around him." I did love learning that the first library for non-Europeans in the area was begun in Johannesburg because Holtby donated her books for the purpose after her death -- although I have a vague memory Brittain shared the same thing in Testament of Friendship, as well as a much more vibrant and alive picture of Holtby's experiences in South Africa & the way they refined her political stance going forward, as well as her sense of herself as a force in the world who could translate her compassion into action. Holtby wrote [b:The Land of Green Ginger|11158204|The Land of Green Ginger|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344606133l/11158204._SY75_.jpg|1002372] during and after her time in South Africa, so I shall read that one to see a bit of her focus as an author in the timeframe. I did like the beginning of the chapter, when Shaw discusses Holtby's lifelong interest in Africa; the fact that one of her forbears had been a governor in Africa & she'd had a childhood of stories about him from her mother; and the fact that Jean McWilliam went to South Africa in 1920 & may have inspired her to follow suit. Their friendship is covered in [b:Letters to a Friend|21841740|Letters to a Friend|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1396567133l/21841740._SY75_.jpg|23686918] which I own & can't wait to read.
Holtby's declining health & death are covered in this biography. So are her novels, all of which I intend to read. :) According to Shaw, Holtby's novels tend to feature romance that cannot be attained & that therefore turn into an opportunity for the protagonist to make herself useful in the world. They also feature the challenges faced when democracy impacts conservative spaces, & how there is loss as well as gain as the changes arrive. While change is inevitable & mostly necessary, it still comes at the cost of treasured customs. In her first novel Anderby Wold, the Rudston Strike is dramatized. This is the same strike that would eventually see Holtby's own family lose their home in Yorkshire: "Winifred commented that the courage of the pioneer is always celebrated but that 'it seems not out of place to talk for a little of the courage of those who, seeing the things they have given their lives to, passing, raise no hand to prevent the coming of the new, that may mean for the world salvation, but for themselves and all they stand for, certain destruction.'" Margaret Rhondda apparently believed that [b:Poor Caroline|11158197|Poor Caroline|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504601257l/11158197._SY75_.jpg|1002373] was a bit of a self-portrait. Shaw says it's a caricature of a spinster which spoofs her ridiculousness while also highlighting her courage. SOUNDS AWESOME. In [b:The Crowded Street|3254063|The Crowded Street|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410293012l/3254063._SX50_.jpg|3289256], female friendship is shown as more lasting than romance: the feminist character Delia is modeled after Vera Brittain, who encourages the stay-at-home "spinster" Muriel to go out and impact the world. [b:Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrelevance|1016247|Mandoa, Mandoa! A Comedy of Irrelevance|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1292529667l/1016247._SY75_.jpg|1002371] draws on Holtby's experiences in Africa to contemplate industrial exploitation. [b:South Riding|10307254|South Riding|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1355820347l/10307254._SY75_.jpg|1002367] is discussed as Holtby's culminating effort, written in her final months while sickness stole her strength and matters of life and death and equality and courage were ever-present in her mind. She offers readers an alternative story for a "superfluous woman" in the tale of Sarah Burton. And in its story of Sarah's resolution and purpose after a failed romance, Shaw feels South Riding better concludes Holtby's feelings for the poet Harry Pearson, who loved her for years but could never commit, than Brittain's portrait of a deathbed proposal in Testament of Friendship, where a dying Holtby joyfully accepts Harry's probably enforced offer as the proper end of their fractured love story. The latter suggests that ultimately Holtby believed in & needed a traditional happily ever after for a woman, while Shaw believes the truth is, she believed in carrying on usefully whatever Harry was doing. Shaw says the theme of South Riding as a novel about a whole community (with Sarah Burton as its focus) is reminiscent of Middlemarch. From the novel: "We are not only single individuals, each face to face with eternity and our separate spirits; we are members one of another."
Of Holtby's biography of Virginia Woolf ([b:Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir|27438605|Virginia Woolf A Critical Memoir|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446720725l/27438605._SY75_.jpg|111844], which I own & have yet to read, & which seems to be a sort of look at Woolf through her existing writings at that time), Shaw says Holtby was able to filter what was complicated in Woolf's work and themes into something a layperson might understand -- because Holtby was so plain-spoken and to the point. Woolf didn't care for the book, feeling it had more to do with Holtby's psyche than her own, but it was still a bold move to be the first to write a study of so famous and complicated a writer. Vera Brittain considered Virginia Woolf one of Holtby's profoundest works. Apparently it contemplates literature's moral responsibility.
Holtby saw her fiction as an agent for change. She considered her feminism "Old Feminism" (as opposed to the New Feminism of her era) because hers focused on humanity as a whole rather than women alone. Since she survived the Great War & thrived while so many men did not in her generation, she carried a legacy of guilt throughout her life, always wanting to make up for her successes by contributing more and more to the people around her. She seemed to feel that it was never enough. She said in 1933, "I want there to be no more wars; I want people to recognize the human claims of... all oppressed and humiliated creatures... And I would like to be used as one of the instruments by which these things are done." She felt that literature should address the issues of its day and help to write history. She felt that women were not living up to their achievements by passively attending only to the world between their own four walls; they ought to get out in the world and make an impact: "It is not enough for women to refrain from making war; they must make peace." She felt that the best men were reluctant to lead, leaving only corrupt men to take positions of power. She'd have likely said the same of women. She once said, "It is like loving the dead to love someone you cannot touch or help." She believed dark feelings should be dealt with privately & stoically rather than burdening others. She thought of humor as "divine sanity."
There's a ton more covered in this biography, but I can't remark on it all. I felt good reading this, because I feel that Holtby was a good, kind, warm, honorable person. So to be in her presence is to feel some of her wholesomeness and be made better and kinder by example. She once wrote, "Life is so short. The menace of horror is over us all so completely; that to waste time on self-pity seems extremely unintelligent." That determination to carry on is all over her life as I've read it thus far, & I find it inspirational. As I said, I've read Testament of Friendship, & that title covers the same ground as The Clear Stream only for me it does it more intimately, with a note of personal respect, anguish, and love that is missing in Shaw's more removed analysis. The Clear Stream contributes to the portrait Brittain has already offered on Holtby by sharing background detail & varying roles she played as a friend, humanitarian, and writer. Ultimately, though, between the two books, I'd definitely recommend Testament of Friendship. It may offer a biased presentation of Holtby, but it is so so so rich in its delivery. Brittain knew and loved Holtby; she brings us extremely close to her vision of her best friend. Shaw covers a lot of detail but not with nearly the same emotional depth. I felt I actually met Holtby in Brittain's portrait. Shaw couldn't possibly get as close as that drawing on letters, biographical facts, and hearsay. It is nice to have the resource though, as I'm guessing (having not read Testament of Friendship since 2018) that Shaw does share perspectives on Holtby that Brittain didn't tap. I would have to say both books offer us only fractions of the woman, but Brittain's is SOULFUL. Still, each offers a very valuable portrait of a woman I can't wait to meet in her own novels. And together, the two speak of a courageous life I'm glad to be able to explore. ˳✧༚˚
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
˳✧༚˚ In a biography of twentieth century British author [a:Winifred Holtby|67319|Winifred Holtby|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1595983552p2/67319.jpg], Marion Shaw covers basically the same ground Vera Brittain covered in [b:Testament of Friendship|13616215|Testament of Friendship|Vera Brittain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335339764l/13616215._SY75_.jpg|821114], but from a more distant and objective perspective. Holtby is currently remembered for her last novel South Riding & for her friendship with Vera Brittain, but she actually wrote several novels, articles, poems, and pamphlets (& a play), & directed Time & Tide (a left-wing feminist magazine of the 1920s through the mid-1980s) before her death. She was committed to feminism, pacifism, socialism, and anti-racism and was very well known and respected in England in the 1930s.
Vera Brittain's biography of Winifred Holtby (Testament of Friendship, which is one of my absolute favorite books) introduces Holtby as a vital half of an experiment in female friendship leading directly to ideal womanhood. Brittain married but maintained her deep friendship with Holtby rather than sacrificing it to the traditional precedence society gives to marriage, and so through Holtby's companionship was made more whole and enriched. Holtby, meanwhile, was able to remain independent while enjoying the company of Brittain's family & home, where she was treated as a valued part of the familial group. According to Marian Shaw, Brittain's book fails to show how Holtby's independence made her successful beyond Brittan's world & transformed the meaning of the word "spinster." Brittain's book also doesn't fully convey how fun Holtby was away from Brittain, & how much people loved to spend time with her. Shaw quotes author Phyllis Bentley (whom I hope to read!) as having once said of Holtby, "I envied [her] with all my heart. Tall and fair and handsome... that lovely speaking voice, that precision of English, that flat in London, that post on Time and Tide, those interesting well-cut clothes, that Oxford degree."
Holtby's life defied the conventional feminine structure: she never married or had a family of her own, nor did she leave much detailed textual evidence behind to document her personal life. She focused more on her service to the world, her friends, & her writing. Hers was very much a life of thought & doing for others. She said of herself, "The things that happen to my friends are the only things worth recording." Late in her life she said, "I never feel I've really had a life of my own. My existence seems to me like a clear stream which has simply reflected other people's stories and problems." As a sort of homage to this feeling, Shaw structures her biography on Holtby as a series of chapters covering her relationship with specific people: Alice Holtby (her mother, who was a conservative woman who couldn't understand Holtby's liberal bent but encouraged her writing from the start); the poet Harry Pearson (whom Holtby knew for years & appears to have loved romantically until her death); Jean McWilliam (her commanding officer during the Great War & a lifelong friend); Vera Brittain (whom she met as a History major at Oxford & developed a deep friendship with, commiserating over their writing and their efforts to change the world); Margaret Rhondda, businesswoman, suffragist & founder of Time & Tide, who exposed Holtby to varied professional women which culminated in her book [b:Women and a Changing Civilization|6664305|Women and a Changing Civilization|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594299289l/6664305._SY75_.jpg|6859120], & who provided Holtby a professional platform to write on politics alongside such people as Leonard Woolf & H.G. Wells; William Ballinger, who involved Holtby in the British Labour Party's work in South Africa; George Catlin, political scientist & husband of Vera Brittain, who often collaborated with Holtby to keep Brittain feeling safe & loved in a world that had hurt her deeply; and Virginia Woolf, the famous twentieth century feminist author who gave Holtby first rights to cover her life in a biography.
Holtby's ill health in her youth is discussed in this book, including a bout of scarlet fever which would ultimately lead to her early death. Before that, though, the early death of her sister Grace is covered, as is the death of her father. Her relationship with her mother is given a lot of coverage. Shaw discusses at length Alice Holtby's strong aversion to having South Riding published after Holtby's death (fearing it might reflect on her badly because it was inspired by her work) & Vera Brittain's astonished decision as Holtby's literary executor to see that it was published nonetheless. Holtby's deep friendship with Brittain, her anguished response to losing Brittain to marriage. She kept her sadness private rather than burdening Brittain, and ultimately chose to go to South Africa to be of use rather than mourn. "In June Vera will go, and I shall be on my own again. No one will ever know what I owe to her for these five years; but now comes the choice again -- how shall I live? One thing I am determined on, that I will not fall into the common error of circumstantial victimization." - Winifred Holtby, October 1924 to Jean McWilliam, on the absence of Vera's companionship after her marriage.
The chapter on Holtby's efforts in South Africa left me completely confused. Lots of references are made to unions and initialed organizations in South Africa, and I didn't know what Shaw was talking about. The basic gist (I think?) is that Holtby became part of a Labour Party effort to reform in South Africa by unionizing black workers. It seems much of her effort was in financial and emotional contributions. I couldn't get a fix on how exactly she contributed (I found the delivery QUITE DENSE), but Ballinger was involved as well as trade unions. Of Ballinger, Holtby said to Jean McWilliam in 1928, "He's a fine man. He has stuck out for six years on uncertain pay, against terrific discouragement and with hostility and misunderstanding all around him." I did love learning that the first library for non-Europeans in the area was begun in Johannesburg because Holtby donated her books for the purpose after her death -- although I have a vague memory Brittain shared the same thing in Testament of Friendship, as well as a much more vibrant and alive picture of Holtby's experiences in South Africa & the way they refined her political stance going forward, as well as her sense of herself as a force in the world who could translate her compassion into action. Holtby wrote [b:The Land of Green Ginger|11158204|The Land of Green Ginger|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344606133l/11158204._SY75_.jpg|1002372] during and after her time in South Africa, so I shall read that one to see a bit of her focus as an author in the timeframe. I did like the beginning of the chapter, when Shaw discusses Holtby's lifelong interest in Africa; the fact that one of her forbears had been a governor in Africa & she'd had a childhood of stories about him from her mother; and the fact that Jean McWilliam went to South Africa in 1920 & may have inspired her to follow suit. Their friendship is covered in [b:Letters to a Friend|21841740|Letters to a Friend|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1396567133l/21841740._SY75_.jpg|23686918] which I own & can't wait to read.
Holtby's declining health & death are covered in this biography. So are her novels, all of which I intend to read. :) According to Shaw, Holtby's novels tend to feature romance that cannot be attained & that therefore turn into an opportunity for the protagonist to make herself useful in the world. They also feature the challenges faced when democracy impacts conservative spaces, & how there is loss as well as gain as the changes arrive. While change is inevitable & mostly necessary, it still comes at the cost of treasured customs. In her first novel Anderby Wold, the Rudston Strike is dramatized. This is the same strike that would eventually see Holtby's own family lose their home in Yorkshire: "Winifred commented that the courage of the pioneer is always celebrated but that 'it seems not out of place to talk for a little of the courage of those who, seeing the things they have given their lives to, passing, raise no hand to prevent the coming of the new, that may mean for the world salvation, but for themselves and all they stand for, certain destruction.'" Margaret Rhondda apparently believed that [b:Poor Caroline|11158197|Poor Caroline|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1504601257l/11158197._SY75_.jpg|1002373] was a bit of a self-portrait. Shaw says it's a caricature of a spinster which spoofs her ridiculousness while also highlighting her courage. SOUNDS AWESOME. In [b:The Crowded Street|3254063|The Crowded Street|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410293012l/3254063._SX50_.jpg|3289256], female friendship is shown as more lasting than romance: the feminist character Delia is modeled after Vera Brittain, who encourages the stay-at-home "spinster" Muriel to go out and impact the world. [b:Mandoa, Mandoa!: A Comedy of Irrelevance|1016247|Mandoa, Mandoa! A Comedy of Irrelevance|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1292529667l/1016247._SY75_.jpg|1002371] draws on Holtby's experiences in Africa to contemplate industrial exploitation. [b:South Riding|10307254|South Riding|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1355820347l/10307254._SY75_.jpg|1002367] is discussed as Holtby's culminating effort, written in her final months while sickness stole her strength and matters of life and death and equality and courage were ever-present in her mind. She offers readers an alternative story for a "superfluous woman" in the tale of Sarah Burton. And in its story of Sarah's resolution and purpose after a failed romance, Shaw feels South Riding better concludes Holtby's feelings for the poet Harry Pearson, who loved her for years but could never commit, than Brittain's portrait of a deathbed proposal in Testament of Friendship, where a dying Holtby joyfully accepts Harry's probably enforced offer as the proper end of their fractured love story. The latter suggests that ultimately Holtby believed in & needed a traditional happily ever after for a woman, while Shaw believes the truth is, she believed in carrying on usefully whatever Harry was doing. Shaw says the theme of South Riding as a novel about a whole community (with Sarah Burton as its focus) is reminiscent of Middlemarch. From the novel: "We are not only single individuals, each face to face with eternity and our separate spirits; we are members one of another."
Of Holtby's biography of Virginia Woolf ([b:Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir|27438605|Virginia Woolf A Critical Memoir|Winifred Holtby|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446720725l/27438605._SY75_.jpg|111844], which I own & have yet to read, & which seems to be a sort of look at Woolf through her existing writings at that time), Shaw says Holtby was able to filter what was complicated in Woolf's work and themes into something a layperson might understand -- because Holtby was so plain-spoken and to the point. Woolf didn't care for the book, feeling it had more to do with Holtby's psyche than her own, but it was still a bold move to be the first to write a study of so famous and complicated a writer. Vera Brittain considered Virginia Woolf one of Holtby's profoundest works. Apparently it contemplates literature's moral responsibility.
Holtby saw her fiction as an agent for change. She considered her feminism "Old Feminism" (as opposed to the New Feminism of her era) because hers focused on humanity as a whole rather than women alone. Since she survived the Great War & thrived while so many men did not in her generation, she carried a legacy of guilt throughout her life, always wanting to make up for her successes by contributing more and more to the people around her. She seemed to feel that it was never enough. She said in 1933, "I want there to be no more wars; I want people to recognize the human claims of... all oppressed and humiliated creatures... And I would like to be used as one of the instruments by which these things are done." She felt that literature should address the issues of its day and help to write history. She felt that women were not living up to their achievements by passively attending only to the world between their own four walls; they ought to get out in the world and make an impact: "It is not enough for women to refrain from making war; they must make peace." She felt that the best men were reluctant to lead, leaving only corrupt men to take positions of power. She'd have likely said the same of women. She once said, "It is like loving the dead to love someone you cannot touch or help." She believed dark feelings should be dealt with privately & stoically rather than burdening others. She thought of humor as "divine sanity."
There's a ton more covered in this biography, but I can't remark on it all. I felt good reading this, because I feel that Holtby was a good, kind, warm, honorable person. So to be in her presence is to feel some of her wholesomeness and be made better and kinder by example. She once wrote, "Life is so short. The menace of horror is over us all so completely; that to waste time on self-pity seems extremely unintelligent." That determination to carry on is all over her life as I've read it thus far, & I find it inspirational. As I said, I've read Testament of Friendship, & that title covers the same ground as The Clear Stream only for me it does it more intimately, with a note of personal respect, anguish, and love that is missing in Shaw's more removed analysis. The Clear Stream contributes to the portrait Brittain has already offered on Holtby by sharing background detail & varying roles she played as a friend, humanitarian, and writer. Ultimately, though, between the two books, I'd definitely recommend Testament of Friendship. It may offer a biased presentation of Holtby, but it is so so so rich in its delivery. Brittain knew and loved Holtby; she brings us extremely close to her vision of her best friend. Shaw covers a lot of detail but not with nearly the same emotional depth. I felt I actually met Holtby in Brittain's portrait. Shaw couldn't possibly get as close as that drawing on letters, biographical facts, and hearsay. It is nice to have the resource though, as I'm guessing (having not read Testament of Friendship since 2018) that Shaw does share perspectives on Holtby that Brittain didn't tap. I would have to say both books offer us only fractions of the woman, but Brittain's is SOULFUL. Still, each offers a very valuable portrait of a woman I can't wait to meet in her own novels. And together, the two speak of a courageous life I'm glad to be able to explore. ˳✧༚˚
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