In this, her bestselling second novel, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth adapts a formula popularised by the Bronte sisters to write a tale of dark and gothic romance set in the Lancashire hills. First published anonymously in 1917 amid the tumult of World War I, the novel quickly achieved strong sales in Britain and the US. By 1920 the author was working with Cecil Hepworth, a lauded pioneer of silent cinema, on the film version. In her fascinating introduction to the novel, Pamela Fox analyses Carnie Holdsworth's popular and political writings and discusses how in Helen of Four Gates, Carnie...

It is not for nothing that Belinda's father called her "The General". Belinda could marshal and control more than armies-she could control the people about her. Belinda's father dies and she is left with an ailing mother to support. But nothing daunted, she sells up their beloved home and sets out on her long Odyssey of domestic service.There surely never was a domestic servant like Belinda. Staving off irate butchers when there is no money to pay them, helping elopements, protecting down-trodden wives, become every-day occurrences in Belinda's life, through which her extreme good-nature and...

Now widely recognized as a novelist and essayist, working-class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth first published as a poet. The three books collected here demonstrate her growth in this genre from her early poems, written when she worked full time in the mill, to her last book of poetry, Voices of Womanhood, which realizes her mature insights into the lives of working-class women. Carnie Holdsworth’s poetry provides both a unique perspective on British life in the early twentieth century and an invaluable testament to the experiences of her gender and class.