Winifred Holtby

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Holtby

<The Times September 30, 1935>

<MISS WINIFRED HOLTBY>

<Yorkshire novelist and critic>

Miss Winifred Holtby, who died in a London nursing home yeaterday, at the early age of 37, was one of the most distinguished of the younger generation of English women writers.

She was born at Rudstone, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, of an old farming family whose name in their own county has long been well known. She was educated at Queen Margaret's School, Scarborough, and at Somerville College, Oxford, which she entered in 1917. Impatient with the life of an undergraduate in time of War, she broke off her studies to join Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps, with which she served for some time in France. This experience had a permanent effect on her mind, which was to appear afterwards in her impassioned advocacy of constructive movements for the promotion of peace. She returned to Oxford in 1919 and two years later took a second class in the Honour School of Modern History.

Shortly afterwards she settled in London, and devoted herself to various activities which included a little teaching, much free-lance journalism, and lecturing on international questions for the League of Nations Union and on various social, especially feminist, problems. Her work took her to several European countries and also to South Africa, where she first became profoundly interested in the conditions of native labour and the emancipation of the black population, which were to be a dominant factor in the remaining years of her life. On her return to England she became a director of "Time and Tide", a position which gave her the chance she needed to further the causes of peace, of oppressed peoples, and women's progress, and - a point which is essential to an understanding of her character - to give rein, when occasion arose, to the reckless humour and Falstaffian gaity which she liked to call her "farmer's daughter" sense of fun.

Her rare combination of imaginative and administrative gifts, which was in part her strength, had also its drawbacks, causing a duality of motives which was perceptible in some of her literary work. Her passion to persuade sometimes overcame her instincts as an artist, and occasion bursts of rhetoric marred otherwise admirable work. When this was pointed out to her she admitted it with characteristic good humour, and maintained that the sacrifice was worth while. She would say that she had inherited, among other Yorkshire qualities, an inexorably civic conscience from her mother, who has been for many years an invaluable member of the East Riding County Council.

Winifred Holtby's first novel, "Anderby Wold" written at the age of 23, describes the Yorkshire scene in which she was born, and shows the clash between tradition and progress on the East Riding farm. It attracted the attention of perceptive critics, without gaining a wide public. Her next novel was "The Crowded Street". It was followed shortly afterwards by "The Land of Green Ginger", a novel which showed a marked development of power, and in which she kept herself singularly free from all interests extraneous to her subject. But it was not until the publication of "Poor Caroline" in 1931 that her force and originality of mind brought her nearer to general recognition. Besides fiction, she wrote other books at this time, including a critical study of Virginia Woolf and the volume "Women", in the Twentieth Century Library, dealing historically with the emancipation of women.

Her most distinguished novel so far published, "Mandoa, Mandoa!" was inspired by a friend's description of the present Emperor of Abyssinia's coronation. It is based on an intensive study of literature dealing with East Africa, and has a topical interest at the present time. She wrote it while handicapped by the onset of the grave illness which she fought for three years with a gallantry never to be forgotten by those who knew her, and which caused her death at last. In spite of prolonged and intense suffering, she produced five books in the last four years, and wrote several plays, that latest of which will probably soon be seen in London. In her last completed novel, "South Riding", to be published in the spring, she returns to the Yorkshire scene of her inmtimate knowldege. Those who have seen the manuscript regard it as a definite fulfilment of the growing promise watched with such high hopes by her critics and those friends to whom her early death is a calamity.

Mr. A.C. Chakravarty writes from Balliol College, Oxford:- May I join my tribute, as a foreign writer and friend of Winifred Holtby ? Her work for Africa, a country which she had visited and for which she felt deep sympathy, will be long remembered, and she was preparing for a visit to Liberia this autumn. "Truth is not sober", a book of inimitable short stories, displayed her gift for brilliant irony and a deep and tender insight into human life. But it is as a person of singular charm, of unstinted generosity of heart, of delightful simplicity, and utter selfless devotion to her friends that we miss her keenly at this hour. To many of us she was the quintessence of the modern spirit, gracious, vivacious, critical, with that wealth of understanding which invested all she was and did with unique distinction."

The funeral will be at Rudstone, Yorkshire, on Wednesday at 11 o'clock. There will be a service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields to-morrow at noon.

END