Books in the The Ethel Carnie Holdsworth series series

In 1919 Ethel Carnie Holdsworth published her third novel, The Taming of Nan.At this point in her career, Carnie Holdsworth was an established author with one notable success, Helen of Four Gates (1917), to her credit. As was typical of her, she did not try to replicate her recent success; instead, The Taming of Nan explored new territory, addressing the issues of fair compensation for a workplace injury and working-class domestic violence. In addition to addressing these societal problems, The Taming of Nan's central family grouping consists of three original characters that reinterpret accepted working-class tropes: Nan Cherry, a working-class virago; her husband Bill, a stolid family man; and their daughter, Polly, a teenaged mill girl who wants nothing more than to have a good time. These characters develop in a context of intergenerational family ties as well as a widespread community whose advice and traditions provide a fertile context for their family drama.

Former "mill girl", Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, wrote this book with a clear mission: believing that in reading stories about working people doing what they could to change things, hearts and minds could be turned towards a better society. In 1910 Ethel Carnie (as she was then) said that the most difficult task "is to teach people to want something better, to sting them into rebellion against poverty, to fire their hearts with a cause". As a passionate reader and regular library user, she knew of the demand for, and influence of, popular fiction and saw this as the way to achieve her dream of a fairer and more equitable world.

"I think it no exaggeration to say that all my poems came into my head at the mill." Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, 1907.

The third novel to be brought back into print in The Ethel Carnie Holdsworth Series, edited by Dr Nicola Wilson, a collection and study of the author's writings that explores her contribution to British working-class literature. The novel, first published in 1924, is Introduced by Roger Smalley.

The second novel to be brought back into print in The Ethel Carnie Holdsworth Series, a collection and study of her writings that explores the author's contribution to British working-class literature.

A centenary edition of the 1913 novel, Miss Nobody, by Ethel Carnie (later Ethel Carnie Holdsworth), widely believed to be the first published novel written by a working-class woman in Britain.