South Riding

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Other county aldermen play prominent roles in some of the plots, as do several residents, with several chapters focusing on their actions and thoughts rather than on Burton and Carne. Besides the fate of Burton and Carne, the fate and effective functioning of the whole of South Riding is at stake, resulting in various side plots.

South Riding (Virago Modern Classics): Holtby, Winifred South Riding (Virago Modern Classics): Holtby, Winifred

On one level, it is an ensemble piece structured around the workings of local government, their impact on the district of South Riding and the people who live there. She can best be compared in America to Margaret Mitchell whose one epic work assured her reputation.This enables Holtby to deal with the issues she felt were important; education, public health and the eradication of treatable diseases, ignorance, poverty and unemployment. I frequently go to Rudston and visit the churchyard and I have been to visit Rudston Hall on one occasion, for a private tour.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby – review | Classics | The

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. Influenced throughout her life by the landscape and traditions of her youth, her novels, short stories and journalism often evoked the people and culture of the Yorkshire Wolds. There are a large number of significant characters and the main characters don’t appear in large portions of the novel. for whatever reason I thought it was clever at the time, when I was growing to really like Sarah Burton, the headmistress of the school for girls in South Riding: I was born to be a spinster, and by God, I’m going to spin. Aware of her impending death, Holtby put all her remaining energy into what became her most important book, South Riding.

Holtby is best remembered for her novel South Riding, edited by Vera Brittain and published posthumously in March 1936, which received high praise from the critics. South Riding was written during the last two years of Winifred Holtby’s life, when she knew she was dying, it was prepared for publication by her good friend Vera Brittain. She never married, though Harry Pearson proposed to her on her deathbed, possibly at the instigation of Vera Brittain.