Winifred Holtby | |
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| Born | (1898-06-23)23 June 1898 Rudston,East Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 29 September 1935(1935-09-29) (aged 37) London, England |
| Occupation | Journalist, novelist |
| Education | Somerville College, University of Oxford |
| Notable works | South Riding (1936) |
Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novelSouth Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.
Holtby was born to a prosperous farming family in the village ofRudston,East Riding of Yorkshire. Her father was David Holtby and her mother, Alice, was afterwards the first alderwoman on theEast Riding County Council.[1] Holtby was educated at home by a governess and then atQueen Margaret's School inScarborough. Although she passed the entrance exam forSomerville College, Oxford, in 1917, she chose to join theWomen's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in early 1918 but soon after she arrived in France, theFirst World War came to an end and she returned home.[2] During this period, Holtby met Harry Pearson, the only man who stimulated romantic feelings in her, due primarily to his tales of the suffering soldiers endured during the war.[3]
In 1919, she returned to study at theUniversity of Oxford where she metVera Brittain, a fellow student and later the author ofTestament of Youth, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship. Other literary contemporaries at Somerville College includedHilda Reid,Margaret Kennedy andSylvia Thompson. After graduating from Oxford, in 1921, Winifred and Vera moved toLondon, hoping to establish themselves as writers (the blue plaque at No. 82Doughty Street refers).[2]
Holtby was, together with Brittain, an ardent feminist, socialist and pacifist. She lectured extensively for theLeague of Nations Union and was a member of the feministSix Point Group. She was active in theIndependent Labour Party and was a staunch campaigner for the unionisation of black workers in South Africa, during which she had considerable contact withLeonard Woolf.
In a 1926 article, Holtby wrote:
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]
After Brittain's marriage in 1925 toGeorge Catlin, Holtby shared her friend's homes in Nevern PlaceEarls Court and subsequently at 19Glebe Place, Chelsea; Catlin resented the arrangement and his wife's close friendship with Holtby,[5] who nevertheless became an adoptive aunt to Brittain's two children, John and Shirley (Baroness Williams of Crosby). Shirley describes her as being "tall – nearly 6ft – and slim, she was incandescent with the radiance of her short and concentrated life".[6]
Holtby began to suffer fromhigh blood pressure, recurrent headaches and bouts oflassitude, and in 1931 she was diagnosed as suffering fromBright's disease. Her doctor gave her only two years to live. Aware of her impending death, Holtby put all her remaining energy into what became her most important book,South Riding. Winifred Holtby died on 29 September 1935, aged 37. She never married, though Harry Pearson proposed to her on her deathbed, possibly at the instigation of Vera Brittain.[3]
Holtby's early novels –Anderby Wold (1923),The Crowded Street (1924) (re-published byPersephone Books in 2008, having been broadcast the previous year as a ten-part BBC Radio 4 dramatisation by Diana Griffiths)[7] andThe Land of Green Ginger (1927) – met with moderate success.
Holtby's fame was derived mainly from her journalism: she wrote for more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the feminist journalTime and Tide (also serving on the board of directors) and theManchester Guardian newspaper. She also wrote a regular weekly column for the trade union magazineThe Schoolmistress. Her books during this period included two novels,Poor Caroline (1931),Mandoa! Mandoa! (1933), a critical study ofVirginia Woolf (1932) and a volume of short stories,Truth is Not Sober (1934).
As well as her journalism, Holtby wrote 14 books, including six novels; two volumes of short stories; the first critical study of Virginia Woolf (1932) andWomen and a changing civilization (1934), a feminist survey with opinions that are still relevant.[8] She dedicated the latter book to composerDame Ethel Smyth and actress and writerCicely Hamiltion, both strongsuffragists who "did more than write "The March of the Women",[9] the song composed in 1910 for theWomen's Social and Political Union.[10] She also wrote poetry, including poems about Vera Brittain's dead brother,Edward.
InWomen and a changing civilisation Holtby linked the 1930s reaction against feminism to a broader "revolt against reason which has affected the intellectual life of the entire Western World". Holtby contextualized the rise of the Nazis, and the Western turn to the political Right in general, as a reaction to the broader upheavals of war and depression: "Just after the [First World] war, society was infected by a rush of idealism to the head. Democracy and reason, equality and co-operation were acclaimed as uncontested virtues. In the new constitutions of Europe and America were incorporated splendid statements about the freedom of opinion, equality of the sexes, accessibility of education. We were about to build a brave new world upon the ruins of catastrophe ... About 1926, after theGeneral Strike in England and its failure, after the entry of Germany into theLeague of Nations and the delay by the Powers in making good their promises, the slump in idealism began to set in. Reason, democracy, the effort of the individual human will, liberty and equality were at a discount." Holtby noted that a former politician had explained the apathy of young women with reference to their experience of "huge impersonal events – the War, the Boom, the Slump. News is reported daily of immense catastrophes over which they can have no control, the Japanese and Indian earthquakes, Chinese famine, African drought ... The individual will seems unimportant, the individual personality is dwarfed, by happenings on so large a scale ... This is the slump complex – this narrowing of ambition, this closing-in alike of ideas and opportunities. Somewhere, a spring of vitality and hope has failed."
Holtby perceived feminism as necessarily tied to Enlightenment rationality, progress, andsocial engineering: "The attempt to create communities where men and women alike share the full stature of humanity is an attempt to do something which has not been done before, and which can only be achieved under certain conditions. And one of these is the acceptance of reason as a guide in human conduct. If we choose an anti-rational philosophy, in this quest, at least, we are defeated. The enemies of reason are inevitably the opponents of 'equal rights.'"[11]
Holtby is best remembered for her novelSouth Riding, edited by Vera Brittain and published posthumously in March 1936, which received high praise from the critics. The book won theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize for 1936[12] and has never been out of print.The Feminist Companion to Literature in English claims that, like all Holtby's other novels, it is "staunchly feminist in its use of a strong woman as the central protagonist."[13] In 1938, it was made into afilm directed byVictor Saville;[6][8] in 1974 it was adapted byStan Barstow forYorkshire Television and in 2011,BBC One produced athree-part dramatisation byAndrew Davies.[14] There have also been several radio adaptations, the most recent forBBC Radio Four in 2005.[15]
Vera Brittain wrote about her friendship with Holtby in her bookTestament 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 toHull Central Library in Yorkshire and are now held at theHull History Centre. Other papers are inBridlington library in Yorkshire, inMcMaster University Library in Canada and in theUniversity 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.
Holtby was buried in All Saints' churchyard inRudston, EastYorkshire, just yards from the house in which she was born. Her epitaph is "God give me work till my life shall end and life till my work is done".[17]
All her novels, together with a collection of short stories and a collection of her journalism, were reprinted byVirago in the Virago Modern Classics series in the 1980s.[18]
In 1967, theRoyal Society of Literature instituted theWinifred Holtby Memorial Prize for the best regional novel of the year.[19] In 2003 the award was incorporated into theOndaatje Prize.
On her death, Holtby left a small legacy and her own collection of books to a library in the South African township ofSoweto, which was opened in December 1940. It was named the Winifred Holtby Memorial Library. It was the first library to be built in Africa specifically for non-Europeans.
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