South Riding

Product Information

Holtby's early novels – Anderby Wold (1923), The Crowded Street (1924) (re-published by Persephone Books in 2008, having been broadcast the previous year as a ten-part BBC Radio 4 dramatisation by Diana Griffiths) [7] and The Land of Green Ginger (1927) – met with moderate success. A radio version starring Sarah Lancashire and Philip Glenister was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999. 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

Winifred Holtby and the Yorkshire Wolds The Story of Winifred Holtby and the Yorkshire Wolds

Set in a fictional district of Yorkshire in the early 1930s, South Riding is an epic, life-affirming novel which explores issues of poverty, social mobility and the value of education. 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. It is also a feminist book, one concerned with the destinies of women from different points along the social spectrum, both young and old. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I loved this thoroughly absorbing novel, a definite five-star read for me. Personally, I am a feminist … because I dislike everything that feminism implies. … I want to be about the work in which my real interests lie … But while … injustice is done and opportunity denied to the great majority of women, I shall have to be a feminist. [4] The last time I read this book I was feeling too raw and emotional at the end to write a review. I think I'll give it a try now. Explora muy ricamente diversos temas y personajes, centrándose especialmente en los conflictos políticos y sociales, y por ello la considero una novela digna de estudio.Such vivid and colourful writing! A really good story unfolding the daily life of a small community with its struggles and triumphs, sorrows and joys! 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.

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

No es una historia sencilla de leer pero sí que se disfruta mucho una vez absorbes todas la complejidad y los diferentes grises que la autora va dejando.Como digo los personajes abundan y he de admitir que no fue tarea fácil asentarme. A veces resultaba lioso y confuso, pero finalmente si te dejas llevar acabas situándote. A pesar de esto, son uno de los elementos más importantes y fascinantes de la novela, ya que todos y cada uno de ellos están dotados de mucha profundidad y complejidad. A través de los diferentes capítulos en los que se te introducen estos personajes vemos explorar su psicología con lupa y somos capaces de ver toda su riqueza interior. Personajes como Lily que al principio me causaban rechazo terminaron despertándome cierta empatía por todas sus contradicciones y matices.

BBC One - South Riding BBC One - South Riding

These residents and politicians are wonderful creations. Holtby populates the book with realistic people with both good and bad traits that cover a broad spectrum of the community. There is a 70ish female alderman, Mrs. Bellows, who’s friends with Carne and champions Burton, which is an especially effective and warm portrayal. Holtby peppers the book with insightful and, at times, sharp, even savage, observations of these South Riding denizens. She demolished Somerset Maugham’s view of marriage as an end in itself as “flatly immoral”. Her careful appreciation of Woolf’s The Waves showed her to be as keen to engage with the formal experiments of modernism as the politics of the day.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. BBC Press Office (5 August 2010). " Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey to star in new Andrew Davies drama South Riding". Press release. Retrieved 8 August 2010. In 2018, we commissioned the York Archaeological Trust to carry out ‘Food for Thought’, a project exploring the history and archaeological landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds. Find out more in our Research Magazine. 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! Winifred Holtby was a committed socialist and feminist who wrote the classic South Riding as a warm yet sharp social critique of the well-to-do farming community she was born into.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby | Hachette UK

The book I read from was Virago Modern Classic and of course that is a portent that it is a fine book.

Alexander Korda produced South Riding and director Victor Saville got great performances out of his whole cast, especially from Ralph Richardson. South Riding was later a television series for the BBC during the Seventies and I can see aspects of it easily adapting to a prime time soap opera type show. Vera Brittain wrote about her friendship with Holtby in her book Testament of Friendship (1940) and in 1960 published a censored edition of their correspondence. [16] Their letters, along with many of Holtby's other papers, were donated in 1960 to Hull Central Library in Yorkshire and are now held at the Hull History Centre. Other papers are in Bridlington library in Yorkshire, in McMaster University Library in Canada and in the University of Cape Town library in South Africa. A biography of Holtby by Marion Shaw, The Clear Stream, was published in 1999 and draws on a broad range of sources. En muchas ocasiones pasaba de estar leyendo con total indiferencia un diálogo de lo más normal entre dos personajes a subrayar cuatro páginas enteras sobre los pensamientos internos que tenía alguno de ellos en medio de la conversación. 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.