Edith Constance Holme was born in Milnthorpe, Westmorland, where, except for brief periods at school in Birkenhead and Blackheath, she remained for the rest of her life. Her eight novels are infused with her deep attachment to this region--to the traditions of her forebears, who were chiefly land agents, to the values of the ruling classes; and increasingly in her later work, to the lives, struggles, and values of the ruling classes; and increasingly in her later work, to the lives, struggles, and values of the region's ordinary folk. She wrote well and carefully about what she knew, and although her novels can be classified as regional, they strike universal themes, for Holme was concerned above all with the continuity of human life, traditions of work and service, and the mysteries of human character as it unfolds amid natural and social constraints. Sir Humphrey Milford, for years the...