Leonora

The Regent

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01538 399033

The Price of Love

ISBN 978 1-904546-44-3

Available from Churnet Valley Books as above price £9.95

This is Arnold Bennett's penultimate Five Towns novel and is a vivid and dramatic portrayal of provincial society about to change for ever with the outbreak of World War 1.  It is a picture of traditional private behaviour and the inevitable march of public progress, whether in commerce, transport or entertainment.  In Rachel Fleckring, Bennett has created another of his strong sympathetic heroines, forced to stamp her authority upon a male dominated world.  We also meet the memorable and monstrous Thomas Batchgrew - cinema entrepreneur, local politician and all-round dubious character.  The redoubtable charwoman, Mrs Tams, is both cleaner and conscience.  The struggle for respectability and honesty is played out in kitchens, works offices, shops and, intriguingly, the cinema.  The introduction makes a strong case for the book's central critical importance as the first English novel to fully engage with cinema and film.

A New Publication 2007

A Man From The North

ISBN 978-1-904546-55-9

Available from Churnet Valley Books as above price £9.95

With the publication of his first novel, A Man From the North, in 1898, Arnold Bennett announced his arrival as a major figure on the literary scene.  Drawing upon his own early experience of life in the Potteries and as a clerk in London, Bennett delights in taking the reader on a journey from the social limitations and religious restrictions of provincial life to the worldly pleasures and sexual temptations of the city. Bennett paints a vivid and accurate picture of music-halls, restaurants, seaside resorts, lodging houses and the growth of the suburbs at the turn of the century.  He introduces the great themes of love and duty, pleasure and pain, life and death so important in his subsequent novels. From its depiction of a shop that will become famous in The Old Wives' Tale to the crowded and colourful scenes of London life, the novel takes on a central importance in setting the stage for Bennett's future masterpieces.  this is where it all begins.  Cover picture: The Man with the Glass of Wine, Modigliani.

All the above have a critical introduction by John Shapcott

Chairman of the Arnold Bennett Society

New Publication

"The Old Wives' Tale"

A Centenary Edition Paperback £10.95

Hardback (cloth, limited edition of 300) £16.95

Churnet Valley Books 1 King Street, Leek,

Staffordshire, ST13 5NW

01538 399033  www.leekbooks.co.uk

The Pretty Lady

Paperback £9.95

Hardback (Cloth, limited edition of 200) £14.95

ISBN 1904546689

The book became a bestseller in 1918, despite calls for it to be banned for undermining public morality with its daring portrayal of a French prostitute operating at the heart of the establishment.  More disturbing to the modern reader than the sexual revelations are Bennett's account of bombing raids over London and the threats of mutilation faced by female munitions workers in Glasgow.

The introduction makes the case for the novel as a masterpiece of symbolic realism, unlocking hidden social, political and psychological realities.  From the shady sexual exchanges of the music-hall to the hypocrisies of high-society, Bennett exposes the hidden civilian truths behind the line of battle.

Available from Churnet Valley Books

1 King Street, Leek, Staffordshire. ST13 5NW

01538 399033 www.leekbooks.co.uk

WHO'S WHO AND WHERE'S WHERE

IN THE FIVE TOWNS

This Index is the result of an exercise undertaken by various members of the Arnold Bennett Society, who have carried out the research necessary to its compilation. 

First published in October 1999, and reprinted in July 2005, a "must" for all AB enthusiasts who wish to delve into the origins of the characters and sites so vividly depicted in Bennett's Five Towns novels and short stories.

It is priced at £5.50 (£6.20 Europe, £7 Rest of the World), and you can get details on how to purchase it from C.A.Gorton@btinternet.com

EDITORIAL

While this issue covers a wide range of topics, three of its articles focus on a single them, namely Bennett the traveller.  The articles are edited versions of some of the papers given at the 2005 Barlaston Weekend Seminar (more will follow in the Autumn issue). 

Travel is a key subject in AB's life and works. His youthful yearning to escape from what must have been an insalubriously industrial environment, and a spiritually and culturally stifling atmosphere, turned him into an obsessive traveller.  It also provided the spark which ignited his creative urge to transform his indelible, seemingly ugly Potteries memories, into what was to become the aesthetic achievement of the Five Town.  Our three contributors in this field take us (with AB) to Paris, the French Riviera, Holland, Denmark, Sicily Greece, Belgium and Cornwall.

EDITORIAL

An eventful summer has seen not only a third successful annual Arnold Bennett Conference (reported in this issue by Martin Laux) but also a reprinting of yet another (the third) out of print Bennett novel by Churnet Valley Books.  The Regent, first published in 1913, is a sequel to The Card and sub-titled "A Five Towns Story of Adventure in London".  However, if you thought (like many critics) the novel was merely a carefree romp, John Shapcott's twenty-six page introduction might make you change your opinion.

Apart from the Conference, the Society has been involved in other events reported in this issue.  Our Chairman ably compared North Staffordshire author Paul Breeze's appearance at the Staffordshire University Film Theatre in May.  And ABS Vice-Chairman Ray Johnson was, of course, the virtuoso performer in the New Victoria Theatre one-man Arnold Bennett show in June.

EDITORIAL

Another successful programme of Autumn activities has been overshadowed by some sad news.  Our popular and vivacious former Secretary Jean Potter died on 20 October after a brave struggle against a series of increasingly serious health problems.  Her husband John and one of her best friends pay tribute to her both as a person whose presence we shall all miss, and as a friend and servant of the Arnold Bennett Society.

Russell Feaver's report of this year's weekend AB Seminar at Barlaston gives us, as usual, an essentially personal view of an experience he obviously relishes.  Once again, the event was attended by a virtually full complement of twenty-nine participants.  As attendance for this weekend is not restricted to ABS members, it provides us with an excellent springboard for further recruitment.

EDITORIAL

Nearly three years ago the Newsletter began reprinting seven "Strange Stories of the Occult" written by Bennett under the pseudonym of Sarah Volatile for the magazine Woman. This issue concludes the series with the second part of "The Crystal-Gazers", which first appeared on 17 April 1895. 

The other two substantial items in the current Newsletter are spin-offs from the last Arnold Bennett Seminar Week-end at Barlaston, which was based on the them of "Love, Adultery and Manipulation".  Elizabeth Leslie focuses on one of the sunniest novels Bennett ever wrote, Helen with the High Hand, while Alan Pedley examines one of his darkest works, Whom God Hath Joined.

Eight years ago the Society published what has become almost every Member's vade mecum, Who's Who & Where's Where in AB's Five Towns, John Potter, who edited that handbook (still available from our Secretary), provides us with a "free" update in this issue.  Other regular features, including reports on the latest Society events, a review of some recently published AB-linked books, Quote. Unquote and Bennettiana complete the Spring fare.

EDITORIAL

Unless we are to believe John Abberley's claim (see the reference to John Wain in Bennettiana), no recording of Arnold Bennett's voice exists.  The explanation of this sad lacuna may have been provided by a strange event which took place in 1927. You will find this anecdote, among many others, in the transcript of a 1967 television programme devoted to our author, "Good Old Nocker".  Coverage of the AB Centenary events in the Potteries is also featured in our Bennettiana section thanks to John Abberley's Sentinel article.

The (fourth) 2007 Bennett Conference was at least as successful as its predecessors.  In addition to Martin Laux's report on that event, we have the satisfaction of receiving a measure of national recognition thanks to participant John Bird's positive reaction which appeared in The Big Issue (see Bennettiana).  One of the co-ordinators of that Conference, ABS Vice-President Ray Johnson, is also furthering the Bennett cause through an initiative which should culminate in the erection of a long-awaited Bennett statue in Burslem in 2008 (see Bennettiana).

In 1925 the well known French journalist, Frederic Lefevre, spent an hour interviewing Bennett for the benefit of the readers of his prestigious weekly literary review Les Nouvelles Litteraires.  Bennett's critically acclaimed novel Riceyman Steps had recently fully restored his high reputation.  I this translated version of the interview AB reveals a very impressive up-to-date knowledge of French writers, as well as throwing some interesting light on the credo regarding the creative process.

EDITORIAL

Welcome to the seventy-fifth issue of the Arnold Bennett Society Newsletter (the first issue appeared in December 1979).  We have certainly moved on from our original modest publication which consisted of five A4 pages.  Here's to our next twenty-eight years!

Three reports of recent events provide ample evidence of a thriving Society.  2008 promises to be another busy, exciting year, as the final three forward-looking items in this issue suggest.  Our Annual dinner, will once again be graced by the presence of a distinguished author.  Our Annual Conference focuses on AB's masterpiece The Old Wives' Tale, published one hundred years ago.

Forty years ago, another celebration, the centenary of Bennett's birth, brought another distinguished writer to the Five Towns.  JB Priestly delivered the Arnold Bennett Memorial Lecture in the Jubilee Hall, Stoke-on-Trent on 26 May 1967.  Alan Day's article, "Two Men from the North", chronicles the relations between these two playwright-novelists.

EDITORIAL

This year we celebrate the centenary of The Old Wives' Tale.  The commemoration of this momentous event will be culminating on 7 June on the occasion of our Fifth Annual Arnold Bennett Conference in Hanley.  The current Newsletter contributes to the celebration by reproducing one of Bennett's two specially drawn title-pages which adorn the 1927 facsimile edition of the novel.  And to se the ball rolling I have reminded readers of the bare facts which triggered the genesis of this unforgettable work.

The Old Wives' Tale is not the only novel Bennett published in 1908 of course.  Neil Robson examines Buried Alive - a novel which has provided the material for two film adaptations (His Double Life 1933 and Holy Matrimony 1943) particularly in its Putney context.  Another perhaps underrated Bennett novel, A Man From the North, is the subject of Pat Marshall's thought-provoking and sensitive study.  and a reassessment of The Regent completes the quartet of articles on Bennett novels.

EDITORIAL

The last few months have been notable ones for the Arnold Bennett Society.  Celebrations of the centenary of The Old Wives' Tale were overshadowed by the death of our President Ruth Bennett.  She was born just two months after her uncle had completed his finest novel.  If anyone questions her interest in, or commitment to her uncle's reputation, they should look at her compilation of documents and memories.  "The Early Years of the Arnold Bennett Society 1954-67", now housed (since 19 May 2009) in Staffordshire's University's Library as part of the Jean Potter Memorial Arnold Bennett Archive created and donated by our former Chairman, John Potter.

The events surrounding the restoration on 5 April of the 1932 plaque commemorating AB's birthplace in Hope Street, Hanley have been reported by Elizabeth Leslie.  Her comments on the appropriateness of the function of the new building which now occupies the site of this now-demolished Number 90, reminded me of AB's first significant published work, namely his at once moving and ironic short story "A Letter Home", which appeared in The Yellow Book in July 1895 (& later reprinted in Tales of the Five Towns).  If only the sad hero of this tale, which focuses on homelessness and destitution, could have enjoyed the facilities of the Brighter Futures Hostel!.

EDITORIAL

Arnold Bennett wrote the whole of his masterpiece The Old Wives' Tale in France, and most of it in a house he rented at Avon, on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau.  He had fallen in love with the Forest, which reminded him of another wilderness, Dartmoor, to which he confides in his journal on 5 October 1907, he was "more "sympathetic" than to any other spot on earth", Je me plais infiniment dans ce pays", he  writes of the Forest on 7 March 1908.  He was, of course, using "pays" in its original sense of "region", not "country". He had been working on what he was sure would be his magnum opus for several months, and he was looking for a house where he could fulfil his aspirations.  After much searching he found Les Nefliers (French for "the medlars")  His French with Marquerite describes the villa (into which the Bennetts moved on 23 April 1908) in her 1925 memoir on AB as having "an atmosphere of peace, independence and luxury".  And she adds that her husband's "imposing enterprise" was carried out "in an almost religious atmosphere".

EDITORIAL

Some years ago the Arnold Bennett Society joined the HG Wells Society in a long-overdue literary commemoration in London.  Representatives of each Society were present at the unveiling of twin plaques on the facade of Chiltern Court, Baker Street.  The two authors not only enjoyed a thirty-four-year (1897-1931) friendship, but also for a while, both resided in this block of luxury flats.  There association has been well chronicled in Harris Wilson's AB & HGW: A Record of a Personal & a Literary Friendship (1960) by AB in his Journal and Letters, by HG in his letters and his Experiment in Autobiography (1934), and numerous biographers of the two authors, two of whom happen to be Vice-Presidents of the Arnold Bennett Society.  These are of course, Margaret Drabble (AB: a Biography, 1974) and Michael Foot (The History of Mr Wells 1995).  As for the relationship itself, it was always sweetness and light, as this comment from HG hints: "We two, he and I, got on in the world abreast - and it was extremely good fun for both of us.  Later we diverges." (Experiment).

EDITORIAL

Obituaries are often carefully prepared, commissioned articles written several years before the subject's death.  Frances Hackett's tribute to Bennett, on the other hand, was obviously written a few days after AB's death, and its spontaneity gives it a compelling freshness even seventy-eight years later.  It is, however, far from a hagiographical portrait.  Among Hackett's negative judgements is his dismissive opinion of AB's WW1 novel The Pretty Lady, which so divided contemporary reviewers.  Churnet Valley Book's new (2009) edition of this neglected work, prefaced by another illuminating twenty-five page introduction by John Shapcott, would I think have made some of those blinkered 1981 critics tone down their hostility.  Assuming (perhaps wrongly?) that a number of readers may be tacking this book for the first time, the Editor of The ABS Newsletter offers his own thoughts on this unusual ("Bennett never wrote anything else quite like it", proclaims the blurb on the 1980 edition) novel.