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Winifred Holtby
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South Riding Paperback – 6 January 2011

by Winifred Holtby (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 834
Edition: 1st
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A new TV tie-in edition of Winifred Holtby's classic novel South Riding, accompanying Andrew Davies's three-part adaptation for BBC1

The community of South Riding, like the rest of the country, lives in the long shadow of war. Blighted by recession and devastated by the loss, they must also come to terms with significant social change.Forward-thinking and ambitious, Sarah Burton is the embodiment of such change. After the death of her fiance, she returns home to Yorkshire focused on her career as headmistress of the local school. But not everyone can embrace the new social order. Robert Carne, a force of conservatism, stands firmly against Sarah. A tormented man, he carries a heavy burden that locks him in the past.

As the villagers of South Riding adjust to Sarah's arrival and face the changing world, emotions run high, prejudices are challenged and community spirit is tested.

Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House) and David Morrissey lead an outstanding cast in this rich and panoramic portrait of community in turmoil. Winifred Holtby's little-known and hard-to-find literary gem is a magnificent masterpiece, to be joyfully rediscovered by a whole new generation of readers.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1849902038
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1849902038
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    BBC EBURY
  5. Publication date
    6 January 2011
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    12.7 x 3.18 x 19.69 cm
  8. Print length
    560 pages
  9. See all details
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Book Description

A new TV tie-in edition of Winifred Holtby's classic novel South Riding, accompanying Andrew Davies's three-part adaptation for BBC1

About the Author

Winifred Holtby was born in 1898, the daughter of David Holtby, a prosperous Yorkshire farmer, and Alice Holtby, the first alderwoman in Yorkshire. Educated at home by a governess and then at a boarding school, Holtby passed the entrance exam for Somerville College but left in early 1918 to join the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps . After the war she returned to Somerville College where she met Vera Brittain and the two became life-long friends. They graduated together in 1921 and moved to London where they hoped to establish themselves as writers. But where Vera's first two novels, The Dark Tide (1923) and Not Without Honour (1925) met with little success, Winifred had much more of an impact with Anderby Wold (1923), The Crowded Street (1924) and The Land of Green Ginger (1927).

Holtby was diagnosed with Bright's Disease (sclerosis of the kidneys) in 1932, and was told she would only have two or three years to live. Determined to get as much work done as possible before the disease took its inevitable toll she put all her energy into what became her most important book, South Riding. Winifred Holtby died on 29th September 1935. South Riding was published the following year and was highly praised by the critics.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ BBC EBURY; 1st edition (6 January 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1849902038
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1849902038
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 3.18 x 19.69 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars 834

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Winifred Holtby

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Top reviews from Australia

leslie george crompton
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Australia on 13 September 2014
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A gem of thirties lit.
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Esmeralda Tintner
2.0 out of 5 stars worthy experiment
Reviewed in Australia on 11 October 2022
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Much as I admire Winifred Holtby for her courageous feminism, peace activism and all the rest - this novel is such a mish mash - and it’s looong - it’s a modern (1930s) version of Jane Eyre complete with a taciturn, tragic but honourable version of Mr Rochester with a mad wife in an expensive care facility which is sending him bankrupt - a daughter who is somewhat hysterical and potentially ‘tainted’ so needs very careful handling - a spunky working class heroine who has managed to get an education and instead of being the governess, is the headmistress of the local girls high school, where the wobbly and unpopular young Rochester girl ends up being sent due to the family’s wealth having been eaten up by luxury sanatoriums.
Add to this an enormous cast of characters from all walks of life, all the intrigues of local Government, an abortive bedroom scene where ‘Rochester’ has a heart attack and nearly dies before anything can actually HAPPEN - and the heroine had even put on the silk underwear she had bought earlier that day as a Christmas present for her sister - which did not even get a viewing - !!!
Then add the fall not only of poor Rochester but even his stalwart steed (black of course) over a cliff - and oh! Did he do it on purpose?!?! The groom is grief stricken. But they can’t sort out how the daughter is to be cared for because wait for it - THERE IS NO BODY - (can’t get probate - a very Holtbyan touch)
You also have to know that the wobbly teenager is called -
wait for it -

MADGE

and
there’s a plane crash as well.
There are people dying in childbirth - people dying of tuberculosis - there are social problems galore.

Basically this is a book about class, and a book about Yorkshire.

This book is infatuated with the romance of the Lord of the Manor - but at the same time it is trying to reconcile that particular fantasy with very worthy ideals like feminism, quality education for women, alleviation of poverty, trying to provide proper health care and housing for very vulnerable people and hoping there won’t be another war. (There was.)
The only way to reconcile all of this is to have the Lord of the Manor die. Because ‘(his) values were not her values’ - the heroine is a modern woman - and Winifred is one too.
Thank you Winifred Holtby for everything you worked for. It is worth reading this novel to better understand the interwar years in England and the literature of the time. But this is not Jane Eyre.
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suzchuch
5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful little book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2024
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this is a nice little book, with a lovely cover. i got it for a friend who said she'd like to re read it.
it came very promptly.
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Resh Susan
5.0 out of 5 stars Old Yorkshire life, Reforms, and a love story
Reviewed in India on 4 June 2016
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A big book with a four page character list is not something I would generally pick. But I am so glad I did. Read this if you want to get lost in idyllic prose set in a neighborhood in old Yorkshire. As you read you will stumble upon beautiful phrases such as "slapped the kettle on the stove" and "fastened it at the throat with a cameo brooch" strewn over a slow narrative.

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.

Half a chapter of romance that made me well up with an undescribable churning in heart is a testament to Holtby's brilliance. A wonderful piece of writing about provincial life through the lives of a neighborhood
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Phil-Don
5.0 out of 5 stars Vie d'un village anglais dans l'entre-deux-guerres
Reviewed in France on 25 March 2016
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South Riding est un roman qui, bien que se déclinant en plusieurs intrigues secondaires, n'a cependant qu'un thème central: la vie d'un village anglais (et ses alentours) après la première Guerre Mondiale. Nous suivons la vie de plusieurs personnages, chacun avec ses qualités, ses défauts, ses joies, ses drames... Bref, des hommes et des femmes ordinaires - et c'est pourquoi le roman parvient à émouvoir le lecteur. De grands thèmes traversent le livre: la politique, l'éducation, tradition contre progrès, etc... Au final, un livre riche, offrant tout le panorama d'une époque au coeur d'un village (fictif, certes) du Yorkshire. Une excellente lecture.
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E. Smiley
5.0 out of 5 stars A great, and surprisingly modern, classic
Reviewed in the United States on 21 April 2014
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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.

This book is set in the early 1930s in the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire. It's an ensemble piece, structured around the activities of local government and the ways they intersect with the characters' lives. Most versions of the cover feature Sarah Burton, the fiery, progressive new headmistress at the local girls' school, and she's one of the most important characters, but there are others: the elderly alderwoman, Mrs. Beddows; the gentleman farmer, Robert Carne, and his troubled daughter, Midge; the bright but impoverished teenager, Lydia Holly; the hedonistic but devout preacher, Councillor Huggins. South Riding follows these characters (and more*--it's a story about an entire community) over two years, with chapters alternating among various characters.

There's a lot going on in this book, and Holtby has a clean style that keeps the story moving and focused on the most interesting moments in the characters' lives. I've seen this book criticized for the space devoted to mundane aspects of adult life--the book focuses as much on the characters' working lives as their personal ones--but that's one of the reasons I loved it. It avoids well-trodden novelistic paths: most of the characters are middle-aged or older, and first love doesn't appear even as a subplot. In large part it's a novel about work and why it matters; anyone who hopes to make a difference with their career will empathize with Sarah Burton's struggle to make a difference in her school and her occasional doubts about whether her work is important enough in the scheme of things.

But there are many poignant and relatable stories that come out of the characters' relationships with their work, from the sad case of Agnes Sigglesthwaite, who meant to be a researcher but wound up a miserable science teacher, to the fervent socialist Joe Astell, who takes a cushy job on the county council due to illness and sometimes has trouble relating to the very people he's trying to help. 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. On the other hand, one of the saddest subplots deals with Lily Sawdon: she is one of the few characters with no real occupation, and perhaps as a consequence, decides her duty as a wife is to hide her sickness from her husband, even at the expense of getting treatment.

South Riding is a character-driven book, and works brilliantly, because the characterization is brilliant. Holtby has the gift of creating fully-formed, memorable characters within just a few pages, characters with all the complexities and foibles of real human beings, and at the same time, people who are easy to sympathize with and like. Sarah Burton is especially memorable: she's a spinster in her late 30s, but she's not a damaged or pitiable figure; she's energetic and optimistic, sociable and engaged with other people. Also a standout is Mrs. Beddows: as the South Riding's first female alderman, she's expected to be colorful and allows people to believe outlandish stories about her, but in reality she's more conventional than that, a worldly-wise grandmother who finds happiness through community involvement--and through the attention of Robert Carne, whom she views as a combination of attractive male friend and spiritual son-in-law. I could go on to describe most of the cast, because they are all excellently-realized characters drawn with exceptional psychological insight, but nothing I say will do Holtby's writing justice.

Another amazing thing about this book is just how modern it feels, despite being published in 1936. By virtue of its focus on interesting, varied female characters--as well as interactions among them--it's one of the most feminist novels I've read, and indeed Sarah's feminism would need little updating for the 21st century. An author writing this story today would no doubt be condemned as anachronistic, but since it really is an old book, I'm happy to praise it for being just as relevant now as when it was written. The same goes for the politics. This isn't a book about politicking, but it is a story involving local government during a time of economic depression, and Holtby's progressive beliefs do shine through in the way the characters think about their world and the effects of their decisions. For me that's a plus; literature should deal with big ideas, and the structure of society and purpose of government are certainly that. The fact that these topics are controversial means authors should engage with them, not ignore them.

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.

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!

*Please don't be intimidated by the character list at the beginning of the BBC edition. It includes everybody who's ever mentioned in the book, but you won't have to remember all of them.
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Tanja Kinkel
4.0 out of 5 stars Book versus TV Adaption (warning: spoilers)
Reviewed in Germany on 22 August 2012
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Courtesy of the BBC iPlayer, I got around to watching a BBC three parter based on a novel which I found captivating in parts and deeply frustrating in others. Seeing as it was an adaption of a novel by Andrew Davies (i.e. Davies was the adaptor, not the novelist), I wondered whether the frustrating parts might be Davies' fault rather than the source materials, especially since I googled the original novelist, Winifred Holtby, and she sounded fascinating (feminist, socialist, daughter of the first female alderman in Yorkshire, wrote the first academic treatise on Virginia Woolf in Britain, died young, unfortunately, in 1935). So I read the novel itself: South Riding. Which indeed proved many, though not all, of the problems I had were due to Davies' alterations, and in any event was a treat to read.

It greatly appealed to the ensemble girl in me; inevitably, and this isn't something I blame Davies for, the tv version was more streamlined and focused on far fewer characters whereas the novel is more of a community story, but when I speak of the ensemble quality, I mean more than that. All the characters come across as three dimensional, and there are no caricatures around. There is a very humane quality to Winifred Holtby's writing: characters who in another novel might have served as boo-hiss villains for failing to live up to their claims of virtue, like the Reverend Huggins who cheats on his wife and becomes embroiled in a land scheme, instead are written with sympathy and allowed their strengths as well as weaknesses (Huggins is sincerely appalled by poverty and injustice and fights against it). Her novel, set in provincial Yorkshire in the early 30s, is also in many ways the anti Brideshead Revisited or the anti Downton Abbey, if you like. There is no nostalgia for the pre-WWI past there, most of the characters are middle class or working class, and the one main character who symbolizes the fading gentry, unable to cope with the present, let alone the future, doesn't have a "golden, idyllic past" since he's simultanously an update of Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre fame, and a fascinatingly both similar and very different one from the simultanously written and more well known update, Maxim de Winter in Rebecca.

The character who comes closest to a leading role, radical headmistresss Sarah Burton, suffers the most in the last third of the tv version because Davies as opposed to Holtby in the novel inevitably privileges Sarah-the-lover over Sarah-the-headmistresss and fataly changes some of her background and motivations.

Let's start with the background. In the novel, Sarah before coming to South Riding had three major romantic relationships; one when she was very young in the war with the inevitable tragic ending when he died, one when she was a teacher in South Africa which ended for political reasons (she also left South Africa because of apartheid, and remember, this novel was finished in 1935), and one with a Labour mp who wanted her to give up her job and marry him and was shocked when she said she'd rather be his mistress instead. In the tv version, Sarah still had her wartime romance but never loved another man since (though as she informs another character "there were other men - none of them meant anything!"). The character she informs is Joe, the sole socialist on the South Riding council; in the novel, Sarah meets him through a spirited political debate. In the tv version, she meets him because she runs out crying out of a performance when a war related patriotic song is sung whereupon she proceeds to tell this total stranger all about her dead wartime lover. In the novel, the two stay friends throughout, even when Joe is leaving South Riding. In the tv version, he gives her a "love me or I'll leave this dump!" ultimatum in part three. He leaves, because Sarah's main storyline in the tv version, which is only one storyline of hers in the novel, is her not quite romance with Robert Carne. When this started I thought "it is a rule universally acknowledged that a brooding Yorkshire squire in possession of a mad wife must be in want of a sensible schoolteacher" and groaned. But if Carne is in some ways a modern Rochester (and in the novel as opposed to the tv version, this is even lampshaded because of course Sarah has read Jane Eyre and the comparison occurs to her), the relationship goes another way. Carne and his reactionary politics never stop symbolizing everything Sarah is against, and she's not economially dependent on him; on the contrary, he's the one in increasing financial distress due to the depression and his inability to cope with modern times. This being the 20th century, his wife isn't hidden in the attic but in a sanatorium (which puts a further financial strain on Carne's purse but my sympathies re: this vanished when the novel told me he was just too proud to let his wife's father pay for it) and the fact he's married isn't a secret, either. As opposed to Rochester and Maxim de Winter, he on the one hand not only married for love but is still in love with the mad wife in question, but on the other also bears and acknowledges guilt direct responsibility for her state of being. (This, btw, is something problematic in both novel and tv version and not Davies' fault, because the fact Carne forced himself on his wife on one occasion when she didn't want sex, resulting in an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy she was explicitly warned against that pushed the already neurotic woman over the edge post birth, is treated at his tragedy, not hers.)

Where the novel and the tv version fatally part ways is in the aftermath of Sarah's and Carne's one and only night together. In both cases, said night takes place in a hotel and before it gets to anything sexual, he has a breakdown due to being sick with the result that they don't have sex but she nurses him through the night and they part being mutually highly embarrassed for different reasons. In the novel, the next time they meet Sarah doesn't bring it up but the anger and embarrassment fuel her confrontational mood, with the result they have a full on fight about their usual issues, part in mutual anger, and since he then immediately has his fatal accident that makes everyone believe he committed suicide for a while, she feels awful and guilty, thinks about resigning and is talked out of it by Mrs Beddowes (the female alderman modelled after Holtby's mother). This conversation takes place in Sarah's office. In the tv version, Sarah and Robert Carne do talk about their night together, they part on loving terms, Sarah declares her love at his graveside in public, then resigns, then actually gets into the train and his talked out of it with Mrs. Beddows literally stopping the train to prevent her from going. It's melodrama versus character drama, and Sarah actually leaving (as opposed to thinking about it because she's depressed and feels guilty in the aftermath of the muddle of that last argument and Carne's death) and only forcibly prevented from it makes her look awful, too, me, because her main commitment in the story (in both versions, though in the novel this is far stronger because as I said we see far more of Sarah being a headmistress) is to her pupils whom she would fail by leaving.

One main story that is well done in novel and tv version alike is the one of Sarah's student Lydia Holly, a working class girl with a scholarship who after her mother dies has to care for all her younger siblings and thus loses her chance at life for a while. Lydia with her passion and her anger is a very convincing teenager and the hopelessness of her situation is extremely claustrophobic, so when a resolution does present eventually itself it's a blinding relief. Holtby is generally good at writing teenagers without either prettifying or demonizing them; one plot thread more important in the novel than in the tv version is what happens with one of the teachers, who is unable to keep discipline or any kind of authority among her students (and is simply bad her job in this sense, though she's well educated and also depends on the income completely as do her elderly parents, and, being in her mid-40s, is unlikely to get another school position if she's dismissed, which is one of Sarah's main dilemmas in the book) and ends up being bullied by the girls into hitting Carne's daughter (in the secureness of her privilege the main bully), which forces the woman to resign. The increasing taunting and bullying of the teenage girls feels chillingly familiar and yet their pov is given a well; they simply are unable to see a teacher as another human being, she's a ridiculous authority figure, and it wouldn't even occur to them that what they're doing is persecution. She's an adult and therefore an alien.

Mrs. Beddowes the Alderman in both book and tv version is a great and rare example of a female character in her early 70s who doesn't fulfill a "mother" (or "grandmother") role in the story; she's one of the main politicians of South Riding, champions Sarah as a headmistress but has a more cool personal relationship with her whereas she opposes Robert Carne politically but shares a long term friendship with him. (The nature of this friendship is different in tv version and novel, though. Because Mrs. Beddowes is a pov character, it's clear in the book that she loves Carne, though because of the age difference and the fact she's married she would never do something non-platonic. In the tv version, you can see her attitude as strictly friendly. When in the novel Mrs. Beddows in her conversation with Sarah after Carne's death talks about how being 70 doesn't make a difference, there are still days you feel like a girl and then you go down the stairs and look in the mirror and the wrinkled face of a stranger looks back, and so she didn't have an option but friendship, in the tv version Davies tones this down to "I loved him, too, and maybe more than I should have" and that's it.

I must admit that Carne being played by David Morrissey helps somewhat to explain why both Sarah and Mrs. Beddowes are attracted to him, because they also agree on the fact he's a hopeless reactionary and none too smart (though honorable and straightfoward; no land buying and selling speculations for Robert Carne, but then again, that's one of the reasons why he goes broke). It occurs to me that I've made the novel and the tv series sound unrelentingly grim, which it's not; there is a lot of humour in it as well - Holtby gets her satiric pen out for many of the council meetings (so much so that her mother felt obliged to resign as an Alderman after the novel got published), and Sarah's drive to install passion in her girls is appealing if you have any soft spot for inspiring teacher stories at all.

Lastly: the novel was finished in the year of Holtby's death, 1935, and there is a passage in which Sarah worries what became of a German teacher she used to know who when last heard of was brought to Dachau. (Just in case you need a reference to how aware the British public at that point could be of what the Third Reich was doing to its opponents, years before the Wannsee conference took ever place and a year before the world-attended Olympics happened in Berlin.) By contrast, Davies, presumably to present Joe as a clueless socialist, gives him a speech to his fellow councilmen of how they should pay attention to the social programs abroad "like Chancellor Hitler's in Germany", which isn't in the novel at all. In fairness, he also lets Joe mention Roosevelt's New Deal program, but still, the difference is annoying.
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