Showing results by author "Winifred Holtby" in All Categories

One of the most oft-used themes for an author to explore is that of themselves and how they see authors in stories coping with everything around them.

Joanna, beautiful and other-worldly, finds herself trapped with her consumptive husband and two girls on a small farm in North Yorkshire. Ground down by local prejudice, her husband’s bitter despair and the merciless demands of their loss-making farm, Joanna escapes into a fantasy world of exotic islands, faraway cities—and Sir Walter Raleigh. Her journey through trial and tragedy however leads to a hopeful and uplifting conclusion.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the author: 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. She died in 1935, aged just 37.

'Escape - Three and Sixpence' is a haunting short story which opens with a Yorkshire housewife putting her head into the gas oven to commit suicide to escape her unbearable life of drudgery. We are swept along with the thoughts and emotions which go through her mind...and the roller coaster of emotions as events unfold.

Charles Laughton presents the classic tale set in the fictional area of South Riding.

Irreverent and entertaining stories which Jameson describes as 'easy to pick up and more tantilising for one's bedside table than a novel'. This selection of Winifred Holtby's short stories is drawn from her two volumes, "Truth is not Sober" and "Pavements of Anderby", published two years after her death. The stories are irreverent and many are autobiographically based, focusing on the Yorkshire farming community.

In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred's own mother).

All 10 Episodes of the BBC Radio dramatisation of Winifred Holtby's novel about Muriel Hammond's journey to womanhood and independence in 1900s Yorkshire. Muriel lives a frustrated life. Constrained by the limits of Edwardian society, her options are limited. Either marry, or stay at home, confined to the small town in Yorkshire in which she was born. However, a friendship she creates and the eve of the First World War set to change her future, and her ambitions for good. Starring Claire Goose and Brigit Forsyth.  

In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred’s own mother).

A collection of short stories written by some of the greatest female writers of all time including Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Katherine Mansfield, and Winifred Holtby.

A gripping collection of classic stories in which the central figures are highly dangerous female characters - ranging from the creepy and unsettling to the utterly terrifying.

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was an English novelist, short story writer and journalist. 'Why Herbert Killed His Mother' is the story of a perfect baby who wins a beautiful baby contest and becomes a tiny celebrity, bringing fame and fortune to his family. When Herbert grows up, he spends most of his life trying to leave 'Baby Herbert' behind him...but his mother cannot quite relinquish the glory days when she was hailed as the perfect mother.

In the stifling confines of Edwardian Yorkshire, Muriel Hammond is waiting for her life to begin. Marriage, respectability, duty–these are all part of the script–but just as she believes that ‘men do as they like’ while women ‘wait to see what they will do’, she dreams of a life beyond those boundaries. As war transforms the village of Marshington and friends slot into their expected roles, Muriel needs courage to reframe her sad fate as a ‘surplus woman’ and look towards her own independent future.

The Modern Age is one of information overload. Bombarded, surrounded, and battered by facts, figures, opinions and seemingly whatever else comes out of anyone’s head from all directions at all hours of the day and night. It’s exhausting. In the pens of such luminaries as Henry James, E M Delafield, C E Montague, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and many others we connect with old fashioned media from publishing and advertising to telegrams and radio and everything in between in ways that are surprising, enlightening but always entertaining.

In the heart of rural Yorkshire at the turn of the 20th century, 28-year-old Mary runs her farm while trapped in a loveless marriage. Her world is upended by the arrival of David Rossitur, a charismatic young socialist who challenges her beliefs and tries to unionise the farmers. As Mary grapples with her attraction to David’s fiery idealism, the novel explores the simmering tensions between tradition and progress in a small farming community.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

In this volume our authors, including Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Winifred Holtby, Bernard Capes and many others bring forth creations and contraptions that are both amazing and abstract as well as diabolical and delightful.

Winifred Holtby was born on 23rd June 1898 to a prosperous farming family in the village of Rudston in Yorkshire. Her early novels met with only moderate success but as a journalist she was both prolific and increasingly well-known. Her articles graced more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

Diplomacy by other means may, at times, sound heroic. A fight for principles and ideals carried out by young men armed to the teeth and directed by older men in pursuit of their own version of glory for themselves and their Nations. Right will triumph over wrong. But war can be an illusion, stirred up by schemers and opportunists to take something from other nations that may or may not be right. As blood and limb are sacrificed the true cost is seen but often set to one side as the dispute becomes embedded in emotions and reason falls away.