As a writer Winifred Holtby is best remembered for South Riding: An English Landscape (1936), the last of her six novels, and for her impressive journalism. Holtby died at the age of thirty-seven, but in that comparatively short life her achievements were many. With her close friend Vera Brittain she became, in her twenties, a prominent social activist for the causes of feminism and world peace, and after a visit to South Africa in 1926 she worked also to eradicate racism there. A forthcoming biography by Marion Shaw is likely to contribute strongly to a growing interest in Holtby's life and achievements.

Winifred Holtby was born on 23 June 1898 in Rudston, Yorkshire, the younger of two daughters of a prosperous farmer, David Holtby, and his forceful, philanthropic wife, Alice, who was elected a member of the East Riding County Council and became the first woman alderman of the area. An independent...