Winifred Holtby

This is the story of Muriel Hammond, at twenty living within the suffocating confines of Edwardian middle-class society in Marshington, a Yorkshire village. A career is forbidden to her. Pretty, but not pretty enough, she fails to achieve the one thing required of her - to find a suitable husband. Then comes the First World War, which tragically revolutionises the lives of her generation. But for Muriel it offers work, friendship, freedom, and one last chance to find a special kind of happiness...

In the aftermath of the First World War, Sarah Burton returns to Yorkshire from London, to take up the position of headmistress at the local girls' school. A modern, forward-thinking career woman, Sarah finds herself torn between work and romance as she falls in love with Conservative landowner Robert Carne.

Winifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award.  

Born into a Yorkshire farming family, Holtby set much of her fiction in the landscape of her youth, including the three novels in this collection. Adapted as a 15-part radio drama, South Riding follows the lives and loves of fiery young headmistress Sarah Burton, landowner and school governor Robert Carne, and alderwoman Mrs Beddowes.

Anderby Wold tells the tale of a farmer's wife, a radical young writer and a village rocked by social change.

And set in the years leading up to World War I, The Crowded Street centres around a woman's journey from introspective teenager to self-fulfilled adult.

Joanna Burton was born in South Africa but sent by her missionary father to be raised in Yorkshire. There she dreams of the far-off lands she will visit and adventures to come. The magic land turns out to be the harsh reality of motherhood and life on a Yorkshire farm. Yet still she dares to dream.