Ethel Carnie Holdsworth – författare

When the Lancashire cotton-mill that employs them burns to the ground, sisters Rachel and Hester Martin are each forced to find their own way to survive in the harsh realities of pre-war industrial Britain. The contrasting paths they take in their quest for domestic autonomy form a subtly strident allegory of the all but insurmountable barriers of class and gender that then enslaved half the population. Part compelling narrative epic, part fiery Marxist-feminist polemic, this faithful, sumptuous, and revelatory adaptation by the award-winning Rickard Sisters reclaims a lost classic by holding it up as a mirror to our own hard times, and as a gloriously flaming beacon to future communities to offer strength, hope, and dignity.

In this, her bestselling second novel, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth adapts a formula popularised by the Bronte sisters to write a tale of dark and gothic romance set in the Lancashire hills. First published anonymously in 1917 amid the tumult of World War I, the novel quickly achieved strong sales in Britain and the US. By 1920 the author was working with Cecil Hepworth, a lauded pioneer of silent cinema, on the film version. In her fascinating introduction to the novel, Pamela Fox analyses Carnie Holdsworth's popular and political writings and discusses how in Helen of Four Gates, Carnie Holdsworth makes a powerful and important contribution both to early cinema and to working-class writing as a whole.

It is not for nothing that Belinda's father called her "The General". Belinda could marshal and control more than armies-she could control the people about her. Belinda's father dies and she is left with an ailing mother to support. But nothing daunted, she sells up their beloved home and sets out on her long Odyssey of domestic service.There surely never was a domestic servant like Belinda. Staving off irate butchers when there is no money to pay them, helping elopements, protecting down-trodden wives, become every-day occurrences in Belinda's life, through which her extreme good-nature and sense of humour carry her in triumph.

Now widely recognized as a novelist and essayist, working-class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth first published as a poet. The three books collected here demonstrate her growth in this genre from her early poems, written when she worked full time in the mill, to her last book of poetry, Voices of Womanhood, which realizes her mature insights into the lives of working-class women. Carnie Holdsworth’s poetry provides both a unique perspective on British life in the early twentieth century and an invaluable testament to the experiences of her gender and class.