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An Arnold Bennett Companion edited by John Shapcott
Contributors: David Amigoni – Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University & Head of the School of Humanities. Sharon Crozier-De-Rosa – Lecturer in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Catherine Goodwin – Head of Research and Digitisation / Project Manager, Your Sculpture. The Public Catalogue Foundation Fred Hughes – Local Historian who specialises in North Staffordshire’s […]
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The Old Wives Tale edited by John Shapcott
Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never been conscious
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Helen With The High Hand foreword by John Shapcott
Written as light entertainment, Arnold Bennett’s Helen With The High Hand was published in 1910, having previously been serialised in 1909 in the Staffordshire Sentinel. Appearing between those two great masterpieces The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and Clayhanger (1910), it is proof of Bennett’s astounding ability to write prolifically and across genres. Bennett’s portrait of […]
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Riceyman Steps edited by John Shapcott
Arnold Bennett’s 1923 prize-winning novel Riceyman Steps is one of the great modernist masterpieces of the twentieth century. The seemingly simple story is about a second-hand bookseller and miser, Henry Earlforward, who courts and marries the sprightly widow Violet Arbe. Their devoted servant, Elsie, is finding it difficult to cope with her shell-shocked lover, Joe. […]
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The Price of Love edited by John Shapcott
In the evening dimness of old Mrs. Maldon’s sitting-room stood the youthful virgin, Rachel Louisa Fleckring. The prominent fact about her appearance was that she wore an apron.
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The Card Edited by John Shapcott
Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867, in Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham Street runs down from St Luke’s Square straight into the Shropshire Union Canal, land consists partly of buildings known as “potbanks” (until they come to be sold by auction, when auctioneers […]
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How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
“Yes, he’s one of those men that don’t know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow’s always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat—half empty! Always looks as if he’d had the brokers in. New […]
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Anna of the Five Towns
The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat, which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the Sunday-school—boys from the right, girls from the left—in two howling, impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and formed backwaters […]
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