South Riding

Here’s the pitch: a soap opera about local government with hints of Middlemarch and Peyton Place. Well. You’d forgive a publisher for taking a pass, but this 1937 novel was an instant bestseller, adapted for film and TV, and has never been out of print (though it's not always easy to find in the U.S.). The secret ingredient is the author herself. Holtby was a native of Yorkshire (location of the fictional South Riding) and a well-known progressive journalist-activist. Chapter by chapter, she moves from the Shacks to Maythorpe Hall, focusing on residents who are never entirely heroic or evil or foolish. The marquee romance may echo the Janes (Eyre/Austen), but Holtby was an expert on the plot twist. As she was writing, she knew she was dying of kidney disease—her most tender portrayals are characters who share that fateful perspective. Her final novel is often called a “beloved classic” because in both challenging and comforting herself, Holtby did the same for generations of readers.