Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) in Current History Volume 1 (1915). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Arnold Bennett
Born	May 27 1867 Hanley, Staffordshire, England
Died	March 27 1931 Chiltern Court, London
Cause of death	Typhoid
Occupation	Novelist

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 - 27 March 1931) was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as journalism and film.

Life

Youth

Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which were joined together at the beginning of the 20th century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the family moved to a larger house between Hanley and Burslem. Bennett was educated locally in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Bennett was employed by his father—his duties included rent collecting. He was unhappy working for his father for little financial reward, and the theme of parental miserliness is important in his novels. In his spare time he was able to do a little journalism, but his breakthrough as a writer came after he had moved from the Potteries. At the age of 21, he left his father's practice and went to London as a solicitor's clerk.

Journalism and nonfiction

Bennett won a literary competition in Tit-Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full time. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial which was bought by the syndicate for 75 pounds. He then wrote another. This became The Grand Babylon Hotel. Just over four years later, his first novel, A Man from the North, was published to critical acclaim and he became editor of the magazine.

From 1900 he devoted himself full time to writing, giving up the editorship. He continued to write journalism despite the success of his career as a novelist. In 1926, at the suggestion of Lord Beaverbrook, he began writing an influential weekly article on books for the Evening Standard newspaper.

As well as the novels, much of Bennett's non-fiction work has stood the test of time. One of his most popular non-fiction works, which is still read to this day, is the self-help book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. His diaries have yet to be published in full, but extracts from them are often quoted in the British press.

Move to France

In 1903, he moved to Paris, where other great artists from around the world had converged on Montmartre and Montparnasse. Bennett spent the next eight years writing novels and plays. Bennett believed that ordinary people had the potential to be the subject of interesting books. In this respect, an influence which Bennett himself acknowledged was the French writer Maupassant whose "Une Vie" inspired "The Old Wives' Tale." Maupassant is also one of the writers on whom Richard Larch, the protagonist of Bennett's first (and obviously semi-autobiographical) novel, A Man from the North, tries in vain to model his own writing.

In 1908 The Old Wives' Tale was published and was an immediate success throughout the English-speaking world. After a visit to America in 1911, where he had been publicized and acclaimed as no other visiting writer since Dickens, he returned to England where Old Wives' Tale was reappraised and hailed as a masterpiece.

Public service

File:Arnold-Bennett-1914.jpg

Bennett in 1914

During the First World War he became Director of Propaganda for France at the Ministry of Information. (At that time the word propaganda did not have the negative implications it acquired later in the twentieth century). His appointment was made directly on the recommendation of Lord Beaverbrook, who also recommended him as Deputy Minister of that Department at the end of the war. He refused a knighthood in 1918.

Osbert Sitwell, in a letter to James Agate, notes that Bennett was not, despite current views, "the typical businessman, with his mean and narrow outlook." Sitwell cited a letter from Bennett to a friend of Agate, who remains anonymous, in Ego 5:

I find I am richer this year than last; so I enclose a cheque for 500 pounds for you to distribute among young writers and artists and musicians who may need the money. You will know, better than I do, who they are. But I must make one condition, that you do not reveal that the money has come from me, or tell anyone about it.

Final years

He separated from his French wife in 1922 and fell in love with the actress Dorothy Cheston, with whom he stayed for the rest of his life. Their daughter, Virginia Eldin, lived in France and was president of the Arnold Bennett Society.

He died of typhoid at his home in Baker Street, London, on 27 March 1931, after returning from a visit to France. His ashes are buried in Burslem cemetery.

Writing

The Potteries

In 1902, Anna of the Five Towns, the first of a succession of stories which detailed life in the Potteries, appeared. His most famous works are the Clayhanger trilogy and The Old Wives' Tale. These books draw on his experience of life in the Potteries, as did most of his best work. In his novels the Potteries are referred to as "the Five Towns"; Bennett felt that the name was more euphonious than "the Six Towns" so Fenton was omitted. The real towns and their Bennett counterparts are:

The Six Towns of Stoke-on-Trent	Bennett's Five Towns
Tunstall	Turnhill
Burslem	Bursley
Hanley	Hanbridge
Stoke	Knype
Fenton	The 'forgotten town'
Longton	Longshaw

All but one of these are mild disguises; "Knype" may possibly be taken from the nearby village of Knypersley near Biddulph, and Knypersley Hall. Neighbouring Oldcastle, where Edwin Clayhanger went to school, is Newcastle under Lyme. Axe, towards which Tertius Ingpen lived, is Leek.

Several of his books set in the Potteries have been made into films (for example The Card starring Alec Guinness) and television mini-series (such as "Anna of the Five Towns" and "Clayhanger").

Criticism

Critically, Bennett has not always had an easy ride. His output was prodigious and, by his own admission, based on maximizing his income rather than from creative necessity. As he put it:

Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself? Not me. If anyone imagines my sole aim is art for art’s sake, they are cruelly deceived.

Contemporary critics—Virginia Woolf in particular—perceived weaknesses in his work. To her and other Bloomsbury authors, Bennett represented the "old guard" in literary terms. His style was traditional rather than modern, which made him an obvious target for those challenging literary conventions. Max Beerbohm criticized him as a social climber who had forgotten his origins. He drew a mature and well fed Bennett expounding, "All to plan, you see" to a younger tougher version of himself, who replies: "Yes — but MY plan."

For much of the 20th Century, Bennett's work was tainted by this perception; it was not until the 1990s that a more positive view of his work became widely accepted. The noted English critic John Carey was a major influence on his rehabilitation. He praises him in his 1992 book, The Intellectuals and the Masses. ISBN 978-0-571-16926-9. , declaring Bennett to be his "hero" because his writings "represent a systematic dismemberment of the intellectuals' case against the masses" (p. 152).

Quotations

• My mother is far too clever to understand anything she doesn't like.
• Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Recognition

He won the 1923 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Riceyman Steps.

His poetry was included in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

Bennett is one of a select number of celebrities to have a dish named after them. While staying at the Savoy Hotel in London, the chefs perfected an omelette incorporating smoked haddock, Parmesan cheese and cream, which pleased the author so much he insisted on it being prepared wherever he travelled. The 'Omelette Arnold Bennett' has remained a Savoy standard dish ever since.

The George Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, has a restaurant named after Bennett. It is adorned with Arnold Bennett photographs and memorabilia.

Publications

Plays

• Milestones (with Edward Knoblock)
• The Great Adventure. A Play of Fancy in Four Acts - play

Novels

• A Man from the North – 1898
• The Grand Babylon Hotel – 1902
• Anna of the Five Towns – 1902
• The Gates of Wrath – 1903
• Leonora – 1903
• A Great Man – 1904
• Teresa of Watling Street – 1904
• Sacred and Profane Love – 1905 (Revised and republished as The Book of Carlotta in 1911)
• Whom God Hath Joined – 1906
• Hugo – 1906
• The Grim Smile of the Five Towns – (short stories 1907)
• The Ghost--a Modern Fantasy – 1907
• Buried Alive – 1908
• The Old Wives' Tale – 1908
• The Card – 1910
• Clayhanger – 1910
• Helen with a High Hand – 1910 (Serial title: The Miser's Niece)
• Hilda Lessways – 1911
• The Regent – 1913 (US Title: The Old Adam)
• The Price of Love – 1914
• These Twain – 1916
• The Pretty Lady – 1918
• The Roll-Call – 1918
• Mr Prohack – 1922
• Riceyman Steps – 1923
• Elsie and the Child – 1924
• The Clayhanger Family – 1925, the complete trilogy consisting of Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, and These Twain
• Lord Raingo – 1926
• The Strange Vanguard – 1928
• Imperial Palace – 1930
• Venus Rising from the Sea – 1931

Short fiction

• Tales of the Five Towns – 1905 (short story collection)
• The Matador of the Five Towns – (short stories 1912)
• Paris Nights, and other impressions of places and people – 1913 (Illustrated by E.A. Rickards; George H. Doran Company, NY)
• The Woman who Stole Everything, and other stories – 1927

Non-fiction

• Journalism For Women – 1898
• Fame and Fiction – 1901
• How to Become an Author – 1903
• The Reasonable Life – 1907
• Literary Taste: How to Form It – 1909
• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day – 1910
• Mental Efficiency – 1911
• Those United States – 1912 (Also published as Your United States)
• The Author's Craft – 1914
• Self and Self-Management – 1918
• The Human Machine – 1925
• How to Live – 1925, consisting of How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, The Human Machine, Mental Efficiency, and Self and Self-Management
• The Savour of Life – 1928

Film

• Piccadilly – 1929

Opera

• Don Juan de Mañera

}} For further guidance consult Studies in the Sources of Arnold Bennett's Novels by Louis Tillier (Didier, Paris 1949), and Arnold Bennett and Stoke-on-Trent by E. J. D. Warrilow (Etruscan Publications, 1966). Also, Arnold Bennett: A Biography by Margaret Drabble (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1974).

Other geographical links

• 1907/8 Paris: Old Wives Tale written here.
• 1908 French Riviera: convalescence after typhoid fever. Married and moved to Fountainbleau.
• 1914: Camarques, Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex coast: here he had the yacht Velsa and trips from this 'home in the country' to Frinton-on-Sea gave rise to one of the characters in The Price of Love.
• 1917 Bennett's bachelor pad is at Thames Yacht Club: a couple of rooms 'furnished to his own taste'
• 1920 A month trip to Portugal with Frank Swinnerton, as Bennett was at a particularly low ebb.
• May–June 1926, Bennett stayed in the village of Amberley, West Sussex where he wrote the last two thirds of The Vanguard in 44 days, noting 'I have never worked more easily than in the last six weeks.
• 1928 house rented in Le Touquet for the summer

London

• Strand Palace Hotel London: on London trips, he frequented as it offered a bedside light during his periods of insomnia.
• His wife Marguerite's London flat was over a bank on the corner of New Oxford Street and Rathbone Place.
• "large flat" George Street, Hanover Square, which subsequently Marguerite came to live in
• 1921-ish: 75, Cadogan Square; Dorothy moved in here. From here, they moved in 1930 (according to plaque on the building) to Chiltern Court, an "impressive block of flats" at Baker Street Railway Station (where H. G. Wells also lived).
• 1931 Bennett dies at Chiltern Court on March 26.

External links

Poems

• "You Wake up in the Morning"

Books

• Works by Arnold Bennett at Project Gutenberg
• Free book downloads in HTML, PDF, text formats at ebooktakeaway.com
• Arnold Bennet at Amazon.com

Audio / video

• Public domain audio books of works by Arnold Bennett at Librivox

About

• Arnold Bennett in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Arnold Bennett at Spartacus Educational
• Arnold Bennett's biography by Frank Swinnerton
• "Arnold Bennett: Poet of the potteries" by Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
• The Literary Debate Between Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf

Etc.

• Arnold Bennett Society
• The Potteries
• Images of England Photo of the Bennett family home