Irene Rathbone
{{Short description|Novelist (1892–1980)}}
{{Use British English|date=March 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Irene Rathbone
| image =
| image_size =
| caption =
| other_names =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = 11 June 1892
| birth_place = Edgbaston, England
| death_date = {{d-da|21 January 1980|11 June 1892}}
| death_place = Lower Quinton, England
| death_cause =
| nationality =
| education =
| occupation =
| employer =
| known_for =
| spouse =
| partner =
| children =
| parents =
| relatives =
| website =
| signature =
| footnotes =
}}
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 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.{{Cite ODNB |title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |date=2004-09-23 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/93807 |pages=ref:odnb/93807 |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=H. C. G. |place=Oxford |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/93807 |access-date=2023-03-03 |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=B. |editor3-last=Goldman |editor3-first=L.}}
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 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 helped her publish her semi-autobiographical novel We That Were Young in 1932.{{Cite journal |last=Brassard |first=Geneviève |date=2003 |title=From Private Story to Public History: Irene Rathbone Revises the War in the Thirties |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4317009 |journal=NWSA Journal |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=43–63 |jstor=4317009 |issn=1040-0656}} It tells the story of a single woman who loses her brother and lover during the war.{{Cite web |title=We That Were Young |url=https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/3n5t62uclym6tazg532ijvnpwl8e3z |access-date=2023-03-03 |website=Feminist Press |language=en-US}} She lives a semi-bohemian life, joining 750,000 surplus women, and she treats her existence "with indifference".{{Cite news |last=Cooke |first=Rachel |date=2013-10-11 |title=On the shelf: Bridget Jones and other literary singletons |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/bridget-jones-literary-singletons-widow-single-husband |access-date=2023-03-03 |issn=0261-3077}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Quinn |first=Patrick J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9AtgeckHXYAC&dq=They+Call+it+Peace+rathbone&pg=PA68 |title=Recharting the Thirties |page=68|date=1996 |publisher=Susquehanna University Press |isbn=978-0-945636-90-8 |language=en}}
Rathbone died in 1980 in Lower Quinton.
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rathbone, Irene}}
Category:People from Edgbaston
Category:20th-century English novelists