About this Item
First edition, first impression, limited deluxe issue, number 9 of 175 copies with a hand-written limitation and specially bound in quarter vellum. Published posthumously, this is Holtby's best-known novel: "Her final novel is also her masterpiece. Returning to a Yorkshire setting, Holtby wrote a rich regional study of social change and local government" (ODNB). Inspired by Holtby's mother's experience as the first female alderman in the East Riding of Yorkshire, South Riding weaves together a diversity of characters and plotlines to present a complex, rich society in the author's native county, exhibiting a full range of human emotional experience. In a prefatory letter, she dedicates the novel to "The Alderman Mrs Holtby, My dear Mother", speaking of the "proud delight" of being the daughter of a woman who has "fought so valiant a fight for human happiness". Holtby was a lifelong activist for social justice. She campaigned against racism in South Africa and produced the feminist treatise Women and a Changing Civilization (1934), in which she denounced the reaction against feminism in the 1930s as a "revolt against reason". South Riding is an example of the feminist currents essential to Holtby's work, being "staunchly feminist in its use of a strong woman as a central protagonist" (Blain, Clements, and Grundy, p. 535). Vera Brittain contributes a three-page memorial epitaph for the author especially for this issue - it does not appear in the trade version, nor does the photographic portrait frontispiece. Brittain and Holtby were friends since their days together at Somerville College, Oxford, and when Holtby married, Brittain became a third member of the household (much to the husband's chagrin). Contrary to the gossip, Brittain and Holtby's relationship was never romantic, though they remained deeply connected friends until the latter's death in 1935. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, & Isobel Grund, eds., The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, 1990. Octavo. Portrait frontispiece of the author. Original quarter vellum, green morocco label to spine, green cloth sides, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Spine lightly soiled, slight bump to top edge, corners bumped and a little worn, occasional foxing to leaves: a very good copy.
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