Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was a novelist, journalist, feminist and campaigner. She came from a farming family in the East Riding of Yorkshire and her mother was the first women to serve on the East Riding County Council. Winifred Holtby came up to Somerville in 1917 to read Modern History but took a leave of absence towards the end of her first year to serve with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). In 1919, she returned to Somerville, where she met her tutorial partner and future friend Vera Brittain. Winifred Holtby graduated in 1921 and moved to London to work as a journalist and novelist, sharing a flat with Brittain. Her first novel, Anderby Wold was published in 1923, followed in her lifetime by The Crowded Street (1924), The Land of Green Ginger (1927), Poor Caroline (1931), and Mandoa, Mandoa (1933).
As a journalist, Winifred Holtby wrote for newspapers and magazines including The Manchester Guardian and Time and Tide, the feminist journal founded by Lady Rhondda (who had also, briefly, studied at Somerville). Like Vera Brittain, Holtby was a feminist, socialist and pacifist; she lectured for the League of Nations and campaigned for the rights for black workers in South Africa.
Winifred Holtby died in 1935 of Bright’s disease; her best known and most celebrated work, South Riding, was published posthumously in 1936, with Vera Brittain her literary executor. Holtby left the copyright in her unpublished works to Somerville College and the royalties from South Riding funded a scholarship and fellowship in Modern History for decades after her death.
Contents and provenance
Winifred Holtby met Jean McWilliam, also a Somervillian, when serving with the WAAC in France. McWilliam went on to teach in South Africa and was the head mistress of the Pretoria High School for Girls from 1924 to 1939. The Winifred Holtby Collection at Somerville comprises the letters written by Winifred Holtby to Jean McWilliam between 1920 and 1935, most of which were published after Winifred Holtby’s death in Letters to a Friend (1937). The collection was given to the college in 2011 by Jean McWilliam’s family.
The main Winifred Holtby archive is at the Hull History Centre and the catalogue can be found here.
Using the collection
The collection can be viewed on appointment; please email the archives or complete the application to consult the archives form available here.
Limitations on use
Unpublished works, such as private correspondence, are still in copyright and permission to reproduce or quote will be required from the copyright holder. See the WATCH database for further information.
South Riding remains in copyright in the United States.