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Down Poverty Street
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| Ethel Carnie Holdsworth |
| ISBN 9781849212465 |
| SERIES Ethel Carnie Holdsworth |
| Paperback |
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| Published March 2026
UK Price £14.95
US Price $19.95 |
Annie and William Dale are newly married with a young infant baby, Jackie. Seeking to improve their straitened circumstances, they take in lodgers to cover their rent and set up a millinery business.
Despite their hard work, they face challenges which seem insurmountable as they both succumb to illness and William falls prey to the temptations of alcoholism and gambling. Unbeknownst to Annie, William wagers the contents of their home on a horse race, however against the odds, the horse wins and they come into a fortune.
Down Poverty Street focuses upon the day-to-day reality of life for the lower classes, in which poor health, illness and death wait in the wings, yet the solidarity between a husband and wife, a sense of charity, courage and the strength of a community can overcome.
Carnie Holdsworth deftly avoids romanticising the world which she portrays however, showing characters who find happiness in their lots and who value social relationships and community connections more than financial reward.
This is the first publication of Down Poverty Street in book form.
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) was a working-class writer and socialist activist who campaigned for social and economic justice and the rights of working-class men and women.
A poet, journalist, writer for children, and novelist, she worked in the Lancashire cotton mills from the age of eleven until her early twenties. She left the mills through the patronage of the popular socialist author and Clarion leader, Robert Blatchford (1851-1943), and worked as a journalist in London and as a teacher at Bebel House Women’s College and Socialist Education Centre, before returning back North to her roots.
She had two daughters and edited the Clear Light, the organ of the National Union for Combating Fascism, with her husband from their home in the 1920s. She wrote at least ten novels, making her a rare example of a female working-class novelist.
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© Kennedy & Boyd, an imprint of Zeticula Ltd., Unit 13, 44-46 Morningside Road, Edinburgh, EH10 4BF, Scotland
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