Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold

Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold (1867–1931), novelist, born in Hanley, Staffordshire. He went to London when he was 21 and worked as a clerk before establishing himself as a writer. His first stories were published in Tit-Bits (1890) and the Yellow Book (1895), and his first novel, A Man from the North, appeared in 1898. In 1902 he moved to Paris, returning to England to settle permanently in 1912. In 1926 at the suggestion of his friend Beaverbrook he began an influential weekly article on books for the Evening Standard. He wrote several successful plays, notably Milestones (1912, with E. Knoblock, author of Kismet), but his fame rests chiefly on his novels and short stories, the best known of which were set in the Potteries of his youth, a region he recreated as the ‘Five Towns’. Anna of the Five Towns (1902), the story of a miser's daughter, shows clearly the influence of the French realists whom he much admired. The Old Wives' Tale (1908) was followed by the Clayhanger series (Clayhanger, 1910; Hilda Lessways, 1911; These Twain, 1916; The Roll Call, 1918). The novels portray the district with an ironic but affectionate detachment, describing provincial life and culture in documentary detail, and creating many memorable characters—Darius Clayhanger, the dictatorial printer who started work aged seven in a pot-bank, the monstrous but good-hearted Auntie Hamps, Edwin Clayhanger, frustrated architect, and Hilda Lessways, the independent and strong-willed young woman who marries Edwin. Two volumes of short stories, The Grim Smile of the Five Towns (1907) and The Matador of the Five Towns (1912), are set in the same region. The best novel of his later period, Riceyman Steps (1923), is the story of a miserly second-hand bookseller, set in drab Clerkenwell. But he also wrote many entertaining lighter works, displaying a love of luxury and fantasy, among them The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), The Card (1911), and Mr Prohack (1922). His Journal, begun in 1896, was published in 1932–3 edited by Newman Flower.