# The Crowded Street

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/winifred-holtby/the-crowded-street/9780748130917

![The Crowded Street](https://quivercdn.com/covers/virago/winifred-holtby/the-crowded-street_978-07-4813-091-7.jpg?v=2026-05-19%2007%3A21%3A25)

- Book: [The Crowded Street](https://www.bookquiver.com/winifred-holtby/the-crowded-street) ([The Crowded Street.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/winifred-holtby/the-crowded-street.md))
- Authors: [Winifred Holtby](https://www.bookquiver.com/winifred-holtby)
- Publisher: virago
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-07-4813-091-7
- Published: 2011-08-18
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

'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.