South Riding - Couverture souple

Holtby, Winifred

 
9780860689690: South Riding

Synopsis

'One of my favourite novels: a life-enhancing, twentieth-century masterpiece' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON

'Rich in humour and worldly insight' INDEPENDENT

'A novel that works beautifully on all sorts of levels, capturing the life of a whole community even as it offers us the passions, frustrations and tragedies of individual lives. . . I can't say enough good things about this book' SARAH WATERS


***

A classic masterpiece of England between the wars, South Riding is a warm, poignant, panoramic portrait of one Yorkshire community

When Sarah Burton returns to her hometown as headmistress she is full of ambition, determined to create a great school and to inspire her girls to take all they can from life. But in the aftermath of the First World War, the country is in depression and ideals are hard won. Lydia Holly, the scholarship girl from the shacks, is the most brilliant student Sarah has ever taught, but when her mother's health fails, her education must be sacrificed.

Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall stands for everything Sarah despises: his family has farmed the South Riding for generations, their position uncontested. Yet Sarah cannot help being drawn to this proud, haunted - and almost ruined - man.

South Riding is a life-enhancing classic, bringing vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change.

This beautiful 90th anniversary edition contains a preface by Shirley Williams, an introduction by Marion Shaw and an epitaph by Vera Brittain.

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À propos de l?auteur

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was an English journalist and novelist. 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. This was adapted into a British Drama film and later a television adaptation by the BBC. She wrote a lot of literary fiction, biographies and memoirs. She was a good friend of Vera Brittain, possibly portraying her as Delia in The Crowded Street. She died at the age of thirty-seven.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

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Life in Yorkshire's town of South Riding is hard-won. A working-class man sinks worries in pub pints. A mother who can barely feed her six children finds herself pregnant again. A Methodist minister falls prey to blackmail. A wife, dying of cancer, struggles to tell her husband. A bright teenager dreams of university but instead lives in squalor, raising her several orphaned siblings. Beneath it all is a fear of another world war breaking out, while the country still reels from the last one.

This is the world Sarah Burton returns to. After years away experiencing the world, she brings bright idealism and a desire for change to a local girl's school, determined to make a difference. But the community is suspicious and entrenched in their traditions - and none more so than Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall. He stands for everything Sarah despises: a rich, titled farmer whose opinions hold unearned influence. Yet Sarah cannot help being drawn to this proud, haunted - and almost ruined - man.

South Riding is a rich, panoramic novel, bringing vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

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