Letters to a Friend by Winifred Holtby (1937)

This collection of letters were written to 'Rosalind' from 'Celia'. Rosalind was Jean McWilliam and Celia, of course, Winifred Holtby. They met in a WAAC camp at Huchenneville in France toward the end of the Great War, where McWilliam was in command and Holtby her hostel-forewoman. An instant mutual respect and friendship bloomed and they became lifelong correspondents. As, after the war, McWilliam soon became a headmistress in South Africa they saw one another in the flesh very rarely. These letters expose a part of Holtby I hadn't divined in reading her first two novels - her amazonian quality and her political and philosophical savvy. But just in case that sounds rather serious it needs mentioning that the other thing they expose is her light-heartedness and wit. The sun shines and hope echoes through these missives; it's a bright book. She discusses her own novels and those of others with a self-deprecating strength of appreciation; she gives flavourful impressions of life as it was lived by her day to day; she analyses popular politics with insight; she argues lovingly and with even passion when disagreeing with McWilliam. This book also allows deep glimpses into her friendships with Vera Brittain and Stella Benson and her part in those literary times - an influence lost with her early death in 1935.