Songs of a Factory Girl: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and Radical Working-Class Women's Writing

This PhD explores the radical writings and legacy of Lancashire mill-woman, Ethel Carnie
Holdsworth (1886-1962), in collaboration with arts commissioning agency Mid Pennine Arts
(MPA). Carnie Holdsworth was a prolific, experimental writer across a variety of genres
including journalism, serial fiction, children's literature, poetry and politics. She is one of the
first working-class women in England to publish a novel (Miss Nobody, 1913) and became
renowned as a radical socialist feminist. At our current time of political polarisation and
increased social and economic disparities, contemporary regional audiences are becoming
aware of Carnie Holdsworth's audacity as a writer and the challenge her works present to
key paradigms of modernity. This PhD will offer the first reassessment of Carnie
Holdsworth's radical literary works, publishing history, and creative impact, contributing to
urgent public demand for greater access to the dynamic, diverse history of working-class
writing.
Research questions and methods
- What was the extent and impact of Carnie Holdsworth's experimental creative
output? How did her writing for periodicals (including Robert Blatchford's The
Woman Worker, the Co-operative's Millgate Monthly, and The Cotton Factory Times)
impact her longer works of fiction and writing career?
- How does Carnie Holdsworth's writing contribute to broader understandings of
popular radicalism? How was Carnie Holdsworth influenced by local interactions,
rural and urban intellectual hubs, as well as East Lancashire's literary legacy?
- What effects did Carnie Holdsworth's lifestyle and precarity have on her writing and
publishing career? What is the significance of place (rural and urban) and mobility in
her work?
- What is the nature of current engagement and re-imagining of Carnie Holdsworth's
writing for new audiences? How can local and national audiences engage with more
of her work? Does her radical, polemical experimentation help re-evaluate models of
working-class writing for today's audiences?
Reflecting the strengths of the supervisory team, the project adopts a mixed methodology,
including archival and bibliographic research, and creative practice. Through co-supervision
with MPA and their Pendle Radicals project, the student will engage in creative/critical
practice to share knowledge and research on Carnie Holdsworth, including with local
communities. Working as part of this pre-existing team, the student will have access to
creative practitioners exploring Carnie Holdsworth's work (i.e. comedian/playwright Ruth
Cockburn, broadside ballad singer/historian Jennifer Reid, and the East Lancashire Clarion
Choir) and links to local audiences already interested in Carnie Holdsworth in Great
Harwood and Oswaldtwistle (Hyndburn), Blackburn, Burnley and Pendle.
Research context
Over the last decade, Carnie Holdsworth's writing has been brought back into the public
domain through reprints of her key novels and the adaptation of her work by MPA and
other regional creative agencies. Yet despite recovery efforts, the significant impact of
Carnie Holdsworth's radical body of writing and her departure from convention is still not
widely known and is hampered by the fact that her full output as a 'newspaper novelist' -
writing across a disparate periodical press - has not been quantified. With support from
Exeter's Digital Humanities Lab, this project aims to redress this by charting and making
publicly accessible for the first time via an online database Carnie Holdsworth's extensive
engagement with the co-operative, feminist, suffrage and socialist press.
The PhD will locate and examine Carnie Holdsworth's oeuvre within several dynamic areas
of academic research, contributing to renewed scholarly interest in the history of working-
class writing and working-class poetry and periodical studies.