South Riding

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The book I read from was Virago Modern Classic and of course that is a portent that it is a fine book. The leading characters are Sarah Burton, an idealistic young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, tormented by his disastrous marriage; Joe Astell, a socialist fighting poverty; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman alderman of the district.

Carne had no social conscience beyond the desire to maintain the station his family had kept for five hundred years. As you say, it’s a tragedy that this author died at such a young age, at the height of her powers with South Riding. Its length and the varied and large array of characters reminded me of Victorian novelists like Eliot and Dickens.On the whole it's a positive and hopeful book, but there is a lot of illness and dying here; the author was terminally ill when she wrote it, and it's hard not to imagine something of Holtby in Astell, who is desperate to accomplish his work before illness keeps him from it. Sarah Burton is the book's chief advocate for social change, and an optimistic believer in the eradication of disease, poverty and ignorance through greater governmental intervention in people's lives. In writing the novel, Holtby was able to find a resolution to the central dilemma dominating her life: how to strike a balance between her reformist activity and her creativity.

Holtby makes even her less savoury characters human with likeable qualities, but she leaves the reader to judge; the other characters not knowing all the picture make their own mistakes. Brittain's epitaph 'Ave Atque Vale' and Elizabeth Ivemey's photographic portrait only featured in this limited, commemorative edition of South Riding, which mourned and celebrated a beloved friend and talented author: "Her radiant life had not reached its prime nor her vital worth its zenith. asylum in Harrogate; the other half he divided between Maythorpe, his horses, and his daughter (if she was his daughter), Midge.The author had an unquenchable belief in and sympathy with human nature; the courage and vitality that enabled her to cover so triumphantly her gigantic canvas blow like a high wind through the story, ventilating its most infected crannies. 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.

Description: The community of South Riding, like the rest of the country, lives in the long shadow of war. More recent studies, in particular Marion Shaw's perceptive reappraisal, The Clear Stream, have demonstrated a much broader basis to her work, and have pointed to her connections with a variety of inter-war groups dedicated to political and social reform. It was adapted for television by Stan Barstow for Yorkshire Television in 1974, starring Hermione Baddeley as Mrs Beddows, Dorothy Tutin as Sarah Burton, Nigel Davenport as Robert Carne and Judi Bowker as Midge Carne.You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. She lectured extensively for the League of Nations Union and was a member of the feminist Six Point Group.

A radio version starring Sarah Lancashire and Philip Glenister was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999. It is very different to present day rural England: there are few incomers, no weekenders or long-distance commuters, and few retirees, although one, Stanley Dollan, a retired solicitor from Kingsport (Hull) who defeats Carne in a County Council election, is in fact an example of this new breed. She was Viking-like in appearance, impressively statuesque with bright blue eyes and very pale flaxen hair. In the novel's closing lines, "a serene old age" beckons for Mrs Beddows, a fate denied Holtby, who died in London in the early hours of 29 September 1935.The cast of characters include an idealistic young headmistress, a socialist fighting against poverty, and the first woman alderman of the area.