South Riding

Product Information

First published in 1936 this is a marvelously femenist novel. Set in the fictional South Riding, with much of the story concerning local poitics, and the different characters and factions associated with the county council, alongside other local people. There is a large cast of characters, at the centre of which is Robert Carne, landowner and councillor, Sarah Burton, a new headmistress for the high school, and Mrs Beddows 72 Alderman, and great friend of Carne. Mrs Beddows - a truly marvelous character - seems to be a portrait - at least in part of Winifred Holtby's mother, herself a local councillor who became (like Mrs Beddows) the first woman Alderman. A wide range of characters means a wide range of relationships, and here too Winifred Holtby excels. Whether two people are cooperating or at loggerheads they always act in a way that is so appropriate and well described that I experienced everything along with them. Tom and Lily’s relationship broke my heart time and time again, and they are relatively minor characters (if there can be said to be such a thing in this novel). Not only does she write scenes tightly focused on one individual or group, she also writes the best, most effective crowd scenes I’ve ever read. The outside performance put on by Madam Hubbard’s girls, at which cast and audience alike spend more time focusing on their own individual thoughts and agendas than the show, is an absolute masterpiece. Her writing reveals a wealth of life experience put to very good use. Born in 1898 on the cusp of the 20th-century, Winifred Holtby was a thoroughly modern woman. Hailing from Rudston in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Holtby was a feminist campaigner, a civil rights supporter and a socialist – as well as a highly regarded journalist and author. Rudston and East Riding

Winifred Holtby - Wikipedia

Secondly, despite the large cast of characters. it is easier than you’d think to remember who is who. The author gives us events to hang up on each character. She also comes with a hint or a reminder occasionally. This is done unobtrusively. Moreover, the further one reads, the easier it becomes to immediately recognize who is speaking or being referred to. This is because each character begins to stand out as a unique individual with an identity all their own. Each has their own peculiarities. You simply can no longer mix them up! As with much of her writing, it depicts a rural community’s struggle against the hardship of the 1930s economic depression and brings to life the people and places Winifred had known best, in the Yorkshire Wolds of her childhood. Bishop, Alan (26 May 2005). "Holtby, Winifred (1898–1935), novelist and feminist reformer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/37563 . Retrieved 4 January 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) In sum, an excellent book, and one that spoke to me much more than classics usually do. I’ll be keeping a copy on my shelf, and I hope some of you will give it a try too!She was buried in October 1935 in All Saintschurchyard in the village where she had been born, below the rolling fields of the Wolds which had so inspired her life and her writing. Today the church has a memorial to the writer.

South Riding: An English Landscape (Virago Modern Classics)

Her literary criticism, too, is full of wonderful sentences. “Those who hold Dostoyevsky to be one of the world’s greatest novelists, a man of deep and tragic perception, a doctor of souls gifted with a sombre intensity of spiritual insight, must read with anguish these long, rambling, egotistic, and quite appallingly unpleasant letters,” she wrote of the Russian writer’s correspondence. In another review, for Good Housekeeping, of a book about ageing by an American psychiatrist, she sent herself up deliciously as “a spinster of 36 (with a hip measurement of 42 – I measured it this morning after reading an unusually apocalyptic and terrifying corset catalogue)”. She demolished Somerset Maugham’s view of marriage as an end in itself as 'flatly immoral' Holtby wrote parts of the novel in Hull’s library, and watched council meetings from the public gallery of the Guildhall. It is the outstanding novel of the local area and, as such, might have expected a plum spot – a stage version, say – in the programme for Hull 2017 UK City of Culture. But there will be no South Riding the opera, nor a ballet about Holtby’s tragically short yet fascinating life, so fans will have to content themselves with a series of talks about writers with connections to the city, including Holtby and the poet Andrew Marvell, organised by Jane Thomas of the University of Hull. This passion for imparting information to females appears to be one of the major male characteristics Winifred Holtby This is an epic portrait of the fictional Yorkshire county of South Riding in the 1930s. It describes the events following the hiring of a new headmistress of the girls’ school, Sarah Burrton, a 40ish progressive, self-confident woman returning to Yorkshire after years of teaching in London. There are many characters, and the plot involves many elements. Several South Riding county aldermen are prominently involved. The most prominent is Robert Carne, a conservative and manly gentleman-farmer, struggling to make ends meet because his wife is in an asylum and trying to bring up his daughter alone. Carne and Burton’s relationship figures prominently and, while there are Jane Eyre elements in the story, their relationship foAt Oxford, Holtby met Vera Brittain, and it is through this friendship that she is probably best known. I lean against that gate in the ivied wall under the ash tree, and hear the clump of farm horse hoofs coming from the drinking pond, and see the sunset beyond the horse pasture and the sixty-acre stretch that lies, dark plough-land, up to the flaming sky.” Winifred Holtby, 1934 So many different personalities and their hopes, expectations, dreams and disappointments and so well written that the reader sympathizes, rejoices with them but there are always those that one can't help but disapprove of! I do have one issue with the book that bears mentioning. The plot doesn’t fit together quite as well as most ensemble pieces; Holtby perhaps got a little carried away with her ability to write great characters, and spent disproportionate time on some secondary players. Alfred Huggins is the chief offender here (I’ve called him a protagonist above, because of the number of chapters starring him, but he has little interaction with or impact on any of the others), followed by the Sawdons. Also, I doubt many people will read South Riding for its language alone: Holtby has the good journalist’s ability to get to the heart of the matter without excess verbiage, but her use of words is rarely memorable. Holtby began to suffer from high blood pressure, recurrent headaches and bouts of lassitude, and in 1931 she was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease. Her doctor gave her only two years to live. Aware of her impending death, Holtby put all her remaining energy into what became her most important book, South Riding. Winifred Holtby died on 29 September 1935, aged 37. She never married, though Harry Pearson proposed to her on her deathbed, possibly at the instigation of Vera Brittain. [3] Writings [ edit ]

South Riding (2011 TV series) - Wikipedia South Riding (2011 TV series) - Wikipedia

This is the story of a multitude of characters, flawed and imperfect as may be' yet with an undeniable charm. Be it Carne, a traditionalist who doesn't want to be pitied for his crumbling finances or Sarah Burton, the fiery headmistress who has modern reforms in mind yet hopelessly in love with her fiercest opponent, or Lydia Holly, who has to give up her education or Madame Hubbard who teaches young girls to dance ti ridiculous songs, every character will earn a place in your heart. I must add this is the first book I have read on local government and workings of the village council in the countryside, hence was refreshing and informative. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is the best classic novel you’ve never heard of. Correct me if I’m wrong. Episode 1, Winifred Holtby - South Riding Omnibus - BBC Radio 4 Extra". BBC . Retrieved 23 September 2017. El libro es denso y lento, al menos a mí me lo ha parecido. Es todo puro costumbrismo y análisis psicológico, por lo que ya no es sólo que haya poca acción sino que además hay que estar muy puesto en la lectura para capturar todos los matices que deja la autora en la mente de los personajes. 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.

Holtby grew up in a prosperous farming family, under the shadow of the Neolithic Rudston Monolith. She would have walked through fields littered with barrows, villas and earthworks, and witnessed centuries-held local farming traditions.