Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (Enoch Arnold Bennett), 1867-1931, English novelist and dramatist. One of the great 20th-century English novelists, Bennett is famous for his realistic novels about the "Five Towns," an imaginary manufacturing district in northern England. Bennett's early career included editing the fashionable magazine Woman and writing literary reviews and articles. About 1900 he began to devote himself industriously to his own work, producing a series of excellent regional novels. Influenced by the naturalism of Zola, he depicted in great detail the grim, sometimes sordid, lives of shopkeepers and potters. His attitude toward his characters was one of affectionate sympathy, and he always managed to make their mundane lives interesting. Bennett's best work is contained in his novels of the "Five Towns," which include Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), the trilogy Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911), and These Twain (1916). Bennett also achieved considerable success as a playwright, most notably with Milestones (1912), written with Edward Knoblock, and The Great Adventure (1913).

Bibliography: See his journal (3 vol., 1932-33); biography by M. Drabble (1974).

Bennett, Arnold (1867–1931). Like George Eliot, Bennett was a fine novelist of provincial middle‐class society—in his case that of the Potteries, a landscape of canals and kilns and trams and chimneys and dust. The Old Wives' Tale (1908) tells of two sisters, daughters of a draper in Bursley (Burslem). Clayhanger (1910) recalls the introduction of steam‐printing into the Potteries. Bennett, born in Hanley, was a solicitor but went to London in 1888 where he made a living editing and writing short stories.

Bennett, Arnold (1867–1931). Like George Eliot, Bennett was a fine novelist of provincial middle-class society—in his case that of the Potteries, a landscape of canals and kilns and trams and chimneys and dust. The Old Wives' Tale (1908) tells the story of two sisters, daughters of a draper in Bursley (Burslem). Clayhanger (1910) recalls the introduction of steam-printing into the Potteries and begins with two lads watching a horse-drawn canal barge bringing china clay up from Cornwall. Riceyman Steps (1923) moves the scene to Clerkenwell and the date to the 1920s, but stays with the same kind of people running a second-hand bookshop and a grocer's with pretensions to be a confectionery. Bennett, born in Hanley, started by following his father's career as a solicitor but went to London in 1888 where he made a living editing and writing reviews and short stories. From 1902 until 1912 he lived in Paris. Bennett's shabby, hard-working characters have something in common with those of Gissing, whom he tried to help, and with those of H. G. Wells, with whom he maintained a lengthy friendship and literary correspondence.

J. A. Cannon