'They promise us all sorts of things,' she said, 'happiness, success, adventure - don't you know? Then suddenly we find ourselves left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that a child has laid aside . . . '

This is the story of Muriel Hammond, at twenty living within the suffocating confines of Edwardian middle-class society in Marshington, a Yorkshire village. A career is forbidden to her. Pretty, but not pretty enough, she fails to achieve the one thing required of her - to find a suitable husband. Then comes the First World War, a watershed which tragically revolutionises the lives of her generation. But for Muriel it offers work, friendship, freedom, and one last chance to find a special kind of happiness . . .

Winifred Holtby (1891-1935), novelist, journalist and critic, was born at Rudstone, Yorkshire. With the exception of South Riding, this is her most successful novel; powerfully tracing one woman's search for independence and love, it echoes in fictional form the years autobiographically recorded by her close friend Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth.