South Riding

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Without emotion, without haste, without even, so far as Lovell could discern, any noticeable interest, the South Riding County Council ploughed through its agenda. Its length and the varied and large array of characters reminded me of Victorian novelists like Eliot and Dickens.

I thought, because at that time I had no knowledge of the book, that the readers had felt a book they loved had been inadequately adapted.Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.

In the case of Miss Sarah Barton, the Council’s action changed the entire shape and color of a life. Central to Holtby’s story is Sarah Burton, a forty-year-old unmarried woman, newly appointed to the role of headmistress at the local girls’ school.

Although a Yorkshirewoman through and through (Holtby is an East Riding name), the author does not use that as her theme. Blighted by recession and devastated by the loss, they must also come to terms with significant social change.

The prize established in Holtby's name by the Royal Society of Literature in 1967 and funded by Brittain, was abolished in 2003, despite the society's promise to Brittain that it would perpetuate Holtby's memory. South Riding is a rich, panoramic novel, and Winifred Holtby brings vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change.She feared that her daughter's depiction of local government, allied to the vein of satire and "puckish mischief" familiar from her earlier books, might expose her own job to criticism and ridicule.

The novel was adapted for the cinema in 1938 starring Edna Best as Sarah Burton, Ralph Richardson as Robert Carne and Edmund Gwenn as Alfred Huggins. I’m hoping to watch the BBC mini series at some point, whenever it moves to the top of the rental list. 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.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 some ways I wish I’d discovered it as a young girl, closer in age to Lydia Holly than I am these days. It is a world of the 1930s where some women are carving out a career, others have more traditional roles, and where issues such as too many children and inadequate maternity care affect others.