Abstract
Enoch Arnold Bennett was born at Hanley in Staffordshire, the son of a solicitor, and was educated in Burslem and Newcastle-under-Lyme. He started work in his father’s office and at the age of twenty-one became a solicitor’s clerk in London. He was a versatile and prolific journalist and writer on many topics, but his great achievement is in the novels, realistic and sensitive about ordinary people in the ‘Five Towns’ of the Potteries (now the City of Stoke-on-Trent) where he grew up: Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910), and its sequels Hilda Lessways (1911) and These Twain (1915). The Card (1911) has admirers, and Riceyman Steps (1923) is agreed to be the best novel of his last period.
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© 1989 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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McEwan, N. (1989). Arnold Bennett 1867–1931. In: McEwan, N. (eds) The Twentieth Century (1900–present). Macmillan Anthologies of English Literature. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20151-8_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20151-8_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-46477-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20151-8
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