National Provincial

National Provincial (first published in 1938) is first and foremost ‘a social-political novel, a sprawling panorama of West Riding life and politics in the mid 1930s’ (Rachel Reeves, MP for Leeds West in her Preface); the feminist plea is made almost obliquely because the author takes feminism for granted: it is thus a subtle feminism. It begins with an enticing description of Mary’s arrival home, her difficulties with her invalid mother and then her re-entry into local life. Just like Mrs Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters and Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, published in 1936, the novel evokes Yorkshire life in all its facets, as well as the everyday experience of a young woman living there.