South Riding is a rich, panoramic novel, and Winifred Holtby brings vividly to life a rural community on the brink of change. The characters in the novel are exceptionally well-drawn: the worthy but none-too-bright Carne; the other County Councillors; the ostensible lead character, Sarah Burton; and the real lead character, Alderman Mrs Beddows, who, if anyone, comes across as the hero of the book. e. Davies was the adaptor, not the novelist), I wondered whether the frustrating parts might be Davies' fault rather than the source materials, especially since I googled the original novelist, Winifred Holtby, and she sounded fascinating (feminist, socialist, daughter of the first female alderman in Yorkshire, wrote the first academic treatise on Virginia Woolf in Britain, died young, unfortunately, in 1935). This tale of universal values mirrored in local experience is not only an achievement of the mind," Brittain wrote in an epigraph to the version of the book published in the United States, reprinted in Virago's new edition, "it is . The cast of characters include an idealistic young headmistress, a socialist fighting against poverty, and the first woman alderman of the area.

Worth seeking out by the sound of things, especially with Ralph Richardson in a key role…I’ll have a look for it. In addition to the miniseries mentioned by others, there is a 1938 film directed by Victor Saville with Ralph Richardson as Carne. While the novel undoubtedly remains a fascinating depiction of a time and place, it is more than that. Holtby is generally good at writing teenagers without either prettifying or demonizing them; one plot thread more important in the novel than in the tv version is what happens with one of the teachers, who is unable to keep discipline or any kind of authority among her students (and is simply bad her job in this sense, though she's well educated and also depends on the income completely as do her elderly parents, and, being in her mid-40s, is unlikely to get another school position if she's dismissed, which is one of Sarah's main dilemmas in the book) and ends up being bullied by the girls into hitting Carne's daughter (in the secureness of her privilege the main bully), which forces the woman to resign.A score of other themes, each with its own individuality, are woven into the amazingly rich and complex pattern of South Riding. Winifred Holtby's little-known and hard-to-find literary gem is a magnificent masterpiece, to be joyfully rediscovered by a whole new generation of readers. It has never been out of print and sold 40,000 copies in the first year in the UK and 20,000 copies in the US. I’m hoping to watch the BBC mini series at some point, whenever it moves to the top of the rental list.

Well, usually I watch adaptations of books I have read, it is not often that I do things the other way round. Holtby had been Brittain's intimate friend since their days at Somerville College, Oxford, in the years immediately following the first world war. It occurs to me that I've made the novel and the tv series sound unrelentingly grim, which it's not; there is a lot of humour in it as well - Holtby gets her satiric pen out for many of the council meetings (so much so that her mother felt obliged to resign as an Alderman after the novel got published), and Sarah's drive to install passion in her girls is appealing if you have any soft spot for inspiring teacher stories at all. 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.Shetakes the mundane workings of local government and makes of them, perhaps surprisingly, an unforgettable fictional world. Beddows: as the South Riding's first female alderman, she's expected to be colorful and allows people to believe outlandish stories about her, but in reality she's more conventional than that, a worldly-wise grandmother who finds happiness through community involvement--and through the attention of Robert Carne, whom she views as a combination of attractive male friend and spiritual son-in-law.