Irene Rathbone (11 June 1892 – 21 January 1980) was an interwar novelist known for her 1932 novel ''We That Were Young.''

Life

Rathbone was born in

Edgbaston Edgbaston () is a suburb of Birmingham, West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It lies immediately south-west of Birmingham city centre, and was historically in Warwickshire. The Ward (electoral subdivision), wards of Edgbaston and Nort ...

in 1892. Her father's family was from Liverpool where the Rathbones were successful liberals. Her mother was Mary Robina, born Mathews, and her father, George, manufactured brass and copper items. She went to a Dame and later boarding school and she had two younger brothers. Before the war she was an aspiring actor. After it started she was initially working in canteens but she was trained as a

Voluntary Aid Detachment The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units we ...

nurse where she was posted to France before returning to nurse in London. Her friend was a munitions worker during the war. Rathbone's brother died of pneumonia while part of the forces occupying Germany in 1919 and in the following year her fiancée was killed in Iraq.

Richard Aldington Richard Aldington (born Edward Godfree Aldington; 8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962) was an English writer and poet. He was an early associate of the Imagist movement. His 50-year writing career covered poetry, novels, criticism and biography. He ed ...

helped her publish her semi-autobiographical novel ''We That Were Young'' in 1932. It tells the story of a single woman who loses her brother and lover during the war. She lives a semi-bohemian life, joining 750,000 surplus women, and she treats her existence "with indifference". Rathbone and Aldington had an affair that ended in 1937. Rathbone dedicated her 1936 novel ''They Call it Peace'' to him, and she wrote a long poem, ''Was There a Summer?: A Narrative Poem'', in 1943 about their relationship. ''They Call It Peace'' consists of overlapping stories based around the war. It was said to be more politically aware than her previous work and to show more developed writing skills. Rathbone died in 1980 in Lower Quinton.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rathbone, Irene 1892 births 1980 deaths People from Edgbaston 20th-century English novelists English women novelists Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses