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Month: July 2023

This Slavery -EC Holdsworth

Published by Writer1 on July 31, 2023

 This Slavery by Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (Trent Editions).
First published in 1925, this is a radical polemical novel and a key intervention in the history of British working-class writing. Carnie Holdsworth, originally a mill worker, became a full-time writer in the 1920’s.
The action follows two sisters, Hester and Rachel Martin, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a fire at the mill leaves them unemployed. As the material poverty of their home-life deepens and the young women are forced to confront the difficulties of their economic circumstances, Hester and Rachel make romantic and political choices that will place them on opposite sides of the great class divide.
Initially slow-moving, the novel clearly demonstrates the oppression and unfairness of the workers’ situation, with grinding poverty, and the police and authorities on the side of the mill owners. The story gathers pace in the second part, with the workers demanding a raise while the owners are desperate to complete large orders.
Well worth reading if you are interested in working-class history.

Asylum (review)

Published by Writer1 on July 15, 2023

Asylum by Moriz Scheyer,translated by P.N. Singer, Profile Books, 306pp.

This memoir was written while Scheyer, an Austrian Jew, was fleeing persecution in Austria and hiding in France. Scheyer was a significant literary journalist in prewar Vienna. Shortly after the Anschluss, he fled to Paris, only to make a failed attempt to flee the city when the Germans invaded. Subsequently he escaped to unoccupied France, only to find himself and his people in increasing danger from German advance and the Vichy round-up of Jews. A failed attempt to escape to Switzerland, incarceration in French concentration camps and contact with the Resistance followed. He survived solely because of the kindness of strangers who hid him, and he eventually found refuge in a mental asylum run by Franciscan nuns.

The manuscript was found only by chance long after the war. It seems Scheyer may have made some attempt to publish, but the top copy was destroyed by the family, who thought it excessively anti-German in the post-war climate.

The book blazes with white-hot anger against the Germans and against French collaborators, and expresses fears that the sufferings of the Jews would be forgotten. This publication (2016) should help ensure that they will not be.

This menoir is well worth reading if you have any interest in the history of the period. Since Scheyer was a professional writer, it is eloquently written.

Travel blog

Published by Writer1 on July 7, 2023

For many years I have kept a travel blog recording places I have visited in the UK, and also some foreign holidays. Most of the posts are accompanied by photographs. I have now decided to link it here for your interest and edification. Days Out Blog