ABSTRACT
In her biography of Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain refers to a play Holtby was writing in 1930 (never published) called 'Efficiency First'. Brittain describes the play as 'a light comedy of women in business' dramatizing the career of Sarah Terrans who 'appears to have been first cousin to Lady Rhondda'.1 The chief preoccupation of the play is its heroine's passion for work or 'business', a passion which is declared 'unnatural' by the male characters, who repeatedly assert that marriage is a far more appropriate pursuit for women. Firmly rebuking her former husband for his charge that she is 'incorrigibly unromantic', Sarah Terrans exclaims, '[U]nromantic? Why! My career has been the wildest romance'.2
