Helen of Four Gates

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In this, her bestselling second novel, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth adapts a formula popularised by the Bronte sisters to write a tale of dark and gothic romance set in the Lancashire hills. First published anonymously in 1917 amid the tumult of World War I, the novel quickly achieved strong sales in Britain and the US. By 1920 the author was working with Cecil Hepworth, a lauded pioneer of silent cinema, on the film version. In her fascinating introduction to the novel, Pamela Fox analyses Carnie Holdsworth’s popular and political writings and discusses how in Helen of Four Gates, Carnie Holdsworth makes a powerful and important contribution both to early cinema and to working-class writing as a whole.