Poor Caroline

Winifred Holtby

Jun 2011 · Vmc Series Book 694 · Sold by Virago

About this ebook

Caroline Denton-Smyth is an eccentric, dressed in trailing feathers and jangling beads, peering out from behind her lorgnette. Sitting alone in her West Kensington bedsitter, she dreams of the Christian Cinema Company - her vehicle for reform. For Caroline sees herself as a pioneer, one who must risk everything for the 'Cause of the Right'.

Her Board of Directors is a motley crew including Basil St Denis, upper crust but impecunious; Joseph Isenbaum, aspiring to society and Eton for his son; Eleanor de la Roux, Caroline's independent cousin from South Africa; Hugh Macafee, a curt Scottish film technician; young Father Mortimer, scarred from the First World War; and Clifton Johnson, a seedy American scenario writer on the make.

Winifred Holtby affectionately observes the foibles of human nature in this sparkling satire, first published in 1931.

About the author

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was an English journalist and novelist. Holtby was a committed socialist and feminist who wrote the classic South Riding as a warm yet sharp social critique of the well-to-do farming community she was born into. This was adapted into a British Drama film and later a television adaptation by the BBC. She wrote a lot of literary fiction, biographies and memoirs. She was a good friend of Vera Brittain, possibly portraying her as Delia in The Crowded Street. She died at the age of thirty-seven.