Nicola Wilson writes:
One hundred years ago today, on the 4th September 1913, Methuen published what is believed to be one of the first novels by a British working-class woman.
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) was a mill girl, brought up in Great Harwood near Blackburn, who worked on the fringes of the literary and political establishment. She campaigned throughout her life for the rights of working men and woman and was an ardent anti-fascist, running The Clear Light, the organ of the National Union for Combating Fascism, from her home in the mid-1920s.
Since discovering her work as a Masters student, I have been convinced that Ethel Carnie Holdsworth deserves a much wider audience and that her novels are of interest to contemporary readers. I am now editing a new series of her works with Kennedy & Boyd, and the centenary edition of Miss Nobody is being published today.
There is a review of the novel on The Times Literary Supplement’s blog page:
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2013/08/reintroducing-miss-nobody.html
