Winifred Holtby – författare

NOW A BRITISH DRAMA FILM AND A MAJOR BBC TELEVISION ADAPTATION. A preface by Shirley Williams, an introduction by Marion Shaw and an epitaph by Vera Brittain.''Rich in humour and worldly insight'' INDEPENDENT ''The novel undoubtedly remains a fascinating depiction of a time and place'' GUARDIAN ''Holtby''s personal masterpiece . . . I can''t say enough good things about this book'' SARAH WATERS When Sarah Burton returns to her hometown as headmistress she is full of ambition, determined to create a great school and to inspire her girls to take all they can from life. But in the aftermath of the First World War, the country is in depression and ideals are hard won. Lydia Holly, the scholarship girl from the shacks, is the most brilliant student Sarah has ever taught, but when her mother''s health fails, her education must be sacrificed. Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall stands for everything Sarah despises: his family has farmed the South Riding for generations, their position uncontested. Yet Sarah cannot help being drawn to this proud, haunted - and almost ruined - man.South Riding is a rich, panoramic novel, bringing vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change.

''One of the exciting books of this period . . . it strikes a wholly new note in the catalogue of books about Africa'' KIRKUS REVIEWS Mandoa is a small African state: at its head a Virgin Princess, conceiving (immaculately) further princesses. The old traditions remain undisturbed until Mandoa''s Lord High Chamberlain, Safi Tala, visits Addis Ababa. There he discovers baths and cocktail shakers, motor cars and cutlery from Sheffield, telephones and handkerchiefs. In short, he has seen an apocalyptic vision - a new heaven and a new earth. Meanwhile in England it is 1931. Maurice Durrant, youngest director of Prince''s Tours Limited, has won North Donnington for the Conservatives. His socialist brother Bill is unemployed and their friend Jean Stanbury loses her job on The Byeword, a radical weekly paper. How all three, and others too, find themselves in Mandoa for the wedding of the Royal Princess to her Arch-archbishop is hilariously told in this wonderful satirical novel, first published in 1933.

Caroline Denton-Smyth is an eccentric, dressed in trailing feathers and jangling beads, peering out from behind her lorgnette. Sitting alone in her West Kensington bedsitter, she dreams of the Christian Cinema Company - her vehicle for reform. For Caroline sees herself as a pioneer, one who must risk everything for the ''Cause of the Right''. Her Board of Directors is a motley crew including Basil St Denis, upper crust but impecunious; Joseph Isenbaum, aspiring to society and Eton for his son; Eleanor de la Roux, Caroline''s independent cousin from South Africa; Hugh Macafee, a curt Scottish film technician; young Father Mortimer, scarred from the First World War; and Clifton Johnson, a seedy American scenario writer on the make. Winifred Holtby affectionately observes the foibles of human nature in this sparkling satire, first published in 1931.

''They promise us all sorts of things,'' she said, ''happiness, success, adventure - don''t you know? Then suddenly we find ourselves left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that a child has laid aside . . . ''This is the story of Muriel Hammond, at twenty living within the suffocating confines of Edwardian middle-class society in Marshington, a Yorkshire village. A career is forbidden to her. Pretty, but not pretty enough, she fails to achieve the one thing required of her - to find a suitable husband. Then comes the First World War, a watershed which tragically revolutionises the lives of her generation. But for Muriel it offers work, friendship, freedom, and one last chance to find a special kind of happiness . . .Winifred Holtby (1891-1935), novelist, journalist and critic, was born at Rudstone, Yorkshire. With the exception of South Riding, this is her most successful novel; powerfully tracing one woman''s search for independence and love, it echoes in fictional form the years autobiographically recorded by her close friend Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth.

Mary Robson is a young Yorkshire woman, married to her solid, unromantic cousin, John. Together they battle to preserve Mary''s neglected inheritance: their beloved farm, Anderby Wold. This labour of love - and the benevolent tyranny of traditional Yorkshire ways - has made Mary old before her time. Then into her purposeful life comes David Rossitur. Young, red-haired, charming, eloquent: how can she help but love him? But David is from a different England - radical and committed to social change. As their confrontation and its consequences inevitably unfold, Mary''s life and that of the calm village of Anderby are changed forever.

Joanna Burton was born in South Africa but sent by her missionary father to be raised in Yorkshire. There she dreams of the far-off lands she will visit and adventures to come. At eighteen, tall and flaxen-haired, she meets Teddy Leigh, a young man on his way to the trenches of the First World War. Joanna has been in love before - with Sir Walter Raleigh, with the Scarlet Pimpernel, with Coriolanus - but this is different. Teddy tells her he''s been given the world to wear as a golden ball. Joanna believes him and marries him, but the fabled shores recede into the distance when, after the war, Teddy returns in ill health. The magic land turns out to be the harsh reality of motherhood and life on a Yorkshire farm. Yet still she dares to dream.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the authorWinifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. She died in 1935, aged just 37.Born into a Yorkshire farming family, Holtby set much of her fiction in the landscape of her youth, including the three novels in this collection.Adapted as a 15-part radio drama, South Riding follows the lives and loves of fiery young headmistress Sarah Burton, landowner and school governor Robert Carne, and alderwoman Mrs Beddowes. Sarah Lancashire, Philip Glenister and Carole Boyd star in this rich, memorable evocation of a community in flux.Anderby Wold tells the tale of a farmer’s wife, a radical young writer and a village rocked by social change. Dramatised from Holtby’s 1923 debut novel, it stars Joanna Mackie, Derek Smith and Joseph Peters.The Crowded Street, set in the years leading up to World War I, centres around a woman''s journey from introspective teenager to self-fulfilled adult. Claire Goose stars as heroine Muriel Hammond in this poignant coming-of-age drama.Wry, witty and irreverent, Holtby’s short stories reflect the diversity of her writing. ''The Celebrity Who Failed'', read by Alice Arnold, features a girl who learns to walk on water – but is unprepared for the public attention that follows. ''Why Herbert Killed His Mother'' is the story of a beautiful baby who turns out to be very different as an adult. A searing condemnation of ‘mother love’, it is read by Anna Massey. And in ''The Voice of God'', read by Hugh Dickson, a radio-like machine enables people to listen in on the conversations of historical figures – but what will happen once the newspapers get to hear of it?Finally, Holtby’s life, legacy and significance are explored in a Woman’s Hour biographical segment and in a revealing radio portrait, The Divided State, written by Valerie Windsor and featuring Alison Fiske as Winifred Holtby.Text copyright © Winifred Holtby 1923 (Anderby Wold), 1924 (The Crowded Street), 1934 (‘The Celebrity Who Failed’, ‘Why Herbert Killed His Mother’, ‘The Voice of God’), 1936 (South Riding)ContentsSouth RidingAnderby WoldThe Crowded Street‘The Celebrity Who Failed’‘Why Herbert Killed His Mother’‘The Voice of God’Woman’s Hour extractThe Divided State© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Winifred Holtby's great novel SOUTH RIDING was published posthumously. She died only a few months after finishing it and never saw it in print. It has since been reprinted a dozen times and remains in print to this day. 

The human mind has many amazing characteristics. It is logical and creative and able to make great leaps of imagination and turn many of its ideas into physical reality.

In this volume our authors, including Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Winifred Holtby, Bernard Capes and many others bring forth creations and contraptions that are both amazing and abstract as well as diabolical and delightful.

Winifred Holtby was born on 23rd June 1898 to a prosperous farming family in the village of Rudston in Yorkshire.

A governess provided her early education before she went to Queen Margaret''s School in Scarborough. After passing the entrance exam for Somerville College, Oxford in 1917, she decided to join the Women''s Army Auxiliary Corps in early 1918. However, soon after her arrival in France, the War ended.

She returned to study at Oxford and met fellow student Vera Brittain. After graduating from Oxford, in 1921, Winifred and Vera moved to London, hoping to establish themselves as authors.

Her early novels met with only moderate success but as a journalist she was both prolific and increasingly well-known. Her articles graced more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

Winifred was a committed feminist, socialist and pacifist. She gave many lectures for the League of Nations Union. She was also active in the Independent Labour Party and was a campaigner for the unionisation of black workers in South Africa.

In 1931 the symptoms of high blood pressure, recurrent headaches and bouts of lassitude brought forth a diagnosis of Bright''s disease. She was given two years to live and now put all her efforts into what was to become her crowning achievement: South Riding. Released posthumously it received lavish praise and enormous sales. Her canon of works tackle difficult subjects head on, many in unusual ways, brimming with verve and usually strong female protagonists.

Winifred Holtby died on 29th September 1935 in London. She was 37.

Let’s be clear. We are all equal under the law. However, even in these more modern times that is not an absolute and still remains a distant ambition for many.

In the days when Britain ruled the waves and bestrode the world as its policeman and plunderer in chief it also subjugated half of its own people to second class status. Women were chattel and property. There were some exceptions based on wealth and birthright but for the overwhelming majority your lot was to fall in with the rules and do as you were told. Many did.

But whilst male society sought to place obstacles in the path to equality, it could not deny their literary talents, which many times they circumvented by using male pseudonyms. However, the soaring sales of magazines and periodicals during the Victorian Age meant they had voracious appetites for literature, whatever the sex of its gender.

Dozens of authors appeared to fill the need. Narratives had new ideas. Characters were emboldened by societal changes and the female voice taking responsibility.

The women included here are talents that dazzle. Put them up against anyone and they rise to the top. Whether they remain with an avid readership today or faded to obscurity with the passing of the times their quality remains undimmed.

They still speak to us with a clear and unique voice.

In this volume our classic women authors embark on a spree of crimes and mayhem that put their male counterparts to shame. In fresh and exciting ways their talents, used either on the side of justice or that of criminal enterprise, will enthral and engage us in very many ways.