These are they whose youth was violently severed by war and death; a word on the telephone, a scribbled line on paper, and their future ceased. They have built up their lives again, but their safety is not absolute, their fortress not impregnable.

As well as her journalism Holtby wrote 14 books including six novels; two volumes of short stories; the first critical study of Virginia Woolf (1932); and "Women and a Changing Civilization" (1934) a feminist survey with opinions that are still relevant today. Vera Brittain wrote about her friendship with Holtby in her book Testament of Friendship (1940) and in 1960 publiWinifred Holtbyd a censored edition of their correspondence. Holtby's early novels - Anderby Wold (1923) The Crowded Street (1924) (re-publiWinifred Holtbyd by Persephone Books in 2008) and The Land of Green Ginger (1927) - met with moderate success.

Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 - 29 September 1935) was an English novelist and journalist best known for her novel South Riding about a Yorkshire community struggling with the Depression of the 1930s.