Arnold Bennett was born and grew up in Hanley, deep in the heart of the 'Potteries' (his 'Five Towns'), a land scarred and its people debilitated by industrial pollution and greed of gain. He left the area in 1898, aged 21, to work as a solicitor's clerk in London, writing in his spare time for magazines such as Tit-Bits. Bennett was a follower of Guy de Maupassant, believing that interesting and enlightening books could be written around the lives of ordinary people, a view vindicated in 1902, when he began publishing a series of books on life in the Potteries to instant critical...
Arnold Bennett was born and grew up in Hanley, deep in the heart of the 'Potteries' (his 'Five Towns'), a land scarred and its people debilitated b...
Arnold Bennett was born in England's heavily industrialised 'Potteries' district (his fictional 'Five Towns'), leaving for London in 1898, aged 21. Following the success of his first novel, in 1903 he moved to that mecca for all things avant-garde and artistic - Paris.
Bennett was drawn to the French literary styles of naturalism and realism, evolving a brilliant synthesis of the two techniques that he uses with such effect in The Old Wives' Tales. In his journal, he speaks of having been inspired to write the novel by observing an old lady in a cafE in Paris and, looking...
Arnold Bennett was born in England's heavily industrialised 'Potteries' district (his fictional 'Five Towns'), leaving for London in 1898, aged 21....