Arnold Bennett

English novelist, playwright, and critic

• Born: May 27, 1867
• Birthplace: Shelton, near Hanley, Staffordshire, England
• Died: March 27, 1931
• Place of death: London, England

Biography

To become an artist dedicated unselfishly to his art was not the goal that Arnold Bennett established for himself. He was a merchant of words who wrote to earn his living, but he wrote with extraordinary facility and keen observation. That he should have become a writer at all was surprising; that he should be remembered as a notable one is almost as strange. Yet out of a welter of potboilers and hack-work, Bennett’s writing now and again rose to a level that is comparable to that of the best of his Edwardian contemporaries, among them Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, and H. G. Wells. The Old Wives’ Tale alone supplies reason enough for gratitude that Bennett lived and wrote.

Enoch Arnold Bennett was born in the regions known as the Potteries, near Hanley, North Staffordshire, one of his Five Towns. His father was a solicitor who had arrived at that station in life after starting out in pottery manufacture and pawnbroking. Neither his family nor his early schooling was such as to stimulate an interest in letters in young Arnold Bennett. Indeed, his parents intended that he, too, should become a solicitor. After attending Newcastle Middle School, he settled down in his father’s office to study law and serve as a clerk.

After a serious disagreement with his father, who had a reputation as a martinet, Arnold Bennett, at the age of twenty-one, left the Potteries for life in London. There, he initially worked as a solicitor’s clerk and was vaguely interested in reading law, but he soon found other interests. Earlier, he had dabbled in journalism and contributed to a local newspaper; after arriving in London, he found the time to read voraciously. The remark of a friend influenced him to consider writing as a means of livelihood. The decision was made when, about 1893, the Yellow Book accepted a story and Tit Bits awarded him a twenty-guinea prize. With that, his days as a solicitor’s clerk came abruptly to an end.

His first journalistic job was on the staff of Woman, where his duties included writing beauty tips and advising the lovelorn. A period of freelancing followed, during which he wrote anything and everything that seemed salable. A move to Bedfordshire was followed by another, in 1900, to France, where he lived for eight years. By 1903, he was writing half a million words a year, eclipsing in industry even the indefatigable Anthony Trollope, and he had become a popular novelist. Though he was astute in money matters, he was far from being a miser; on the contrary, he enjoyed spending money and acquired something of a reputation as a ladies’ man.

In 1907, he married a French actress, Marguerite Hebrard, with whom he lived until their separation in 1921; two years later, he became interested in another actress, Dorothy Cheston, who later bore his only child, Virginia Bennett. Both Hebrard and Cheston later wrote memoirs of their alliances with the author.

Despite its vitality, Bennett always hated the ugly industrial Midlands from which he had come. Yet the region provided him with his best literary themes, and he became the best historian of the Potteries. Characters such as Constance and Sophia Baines in The Old Wives’ Tales or Anna Tellwright of Anna of the Five Towns are unforgettable, both as individuals and as representatives of the lower middle class who were preoccupied with industry, patriotism, and thrift. Although such novels as Clayhanger and Riceyman Steps have genuine appeal, none of Bennett’s other novels equals his masterpiece, The Old Wives’ Tales, in objective realism, re-creation of place, and skillful evocation of the passage of time. Bennett himself shrewdly observed of the work that it was the very best he could do.

More colorful than most of his own characters, Arnold Bennett lived life to the hilt; he enjoyed the kind of life he had earned for himself with his success. Yet he could set these things calmly aside, as during World War I, when called upon to do propaganda work for the government. He toured the United States in 1911, and he found ease and satisfaction during his life in Paris. At home or abroad, however, the Five Towns never completely relaxed their hold on him, either as a man or as a writer. He died in London in 1931 of typhoid fever.

Bibliography

Anderson, Linda R. Bennett, Wells, and Conrad: Narrative in Transition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Explores the work of Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad, all of whom began to write in the 1890’s. Describes how these authors were forced to respond to a major redefinition in the concept of the novel during that period.

Batchelor, John. The Edwardian Novelists. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. After quoting Virginia Woolf’s reservations about Bennett’s fiction, Batchelor compares the two novelists, especially in terms of their treatment of women as being socially conditioned. Discusses Clayhanger, A Man from the North, Anna of the Five Towns, and The Old Wives’ Tale as well as Bennett’s acclaimed short story “The Death of Simon Fuge.”

Broomfield, Olga R. R. Arnold Bennett. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Offers thorough criticism and interpretation of Bennett’s work. Includes bibliography and index.

Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett: A Biography. 1974. Reprint. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Drabble, a respected British novelist in her own right, draws from Bennett’s journals and letters to focus on his background, childhood, and environment, all of which she ties to his literary works. Includes profuse illustrations, an excellent index, and a bibliography of Bennett’s work.

Kestner, Joseph A. The Edwardian Detective, 1901-1915. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. Study of the brief but distinctive Edwardian period in detective fiction. Discusses Bennett’s detective fiction and relates it to the author’s fiction in general, as well as to the detective stories of his fellow Edwardians.

Koenigsberger, Kurt. The Novel and the Menagerie: Totality, Englishness, and Empire. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007. Imaginative literary study traces the relationships of zoos and other animal collections to the narratives in domestic English novels, including those of Bennett, which are discussed in a chapter titled “Elephants in the Labyrinth of Empire: Arnold Bennett, Modernism, and the Menagerie.” Maintains that writers have drawn on menageries as means of representing the dominance of the British Empire in the daily life of England.

Lucas, John. Arnold Bennett: A Study of His Fiction. London: Methuen, 1974. After a brief review of criticism of Bennett’s works, Lucas examines the author’s fiction, devoting lengthy treatments to his major novels, addressing them in terms of character and plot. Ardently defends Bennett’s realism, which Lucas regards as equal to that of D. H. Lawrence. Includes copious quotations from Bennett’s work.

McDonald, Peter D. British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice, 1880-1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Examines the early careers of Arnold Bennett and other writers who published from 1880 to 1914 to trace the transformation of British literary culture.

Owen, Meirion. “The Resonance of Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns to Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.” Notes and Queries 54, no. 2 (June, 2007): 160-163. Charts the similarities between the novels by Bennett and Virginia Woolf, demonstrating how images of women painters and mutilated mackerel appear in both books and discussing how the two authors influenced each other.

Roby, Kinley. A Writer at War: Arnold Bennett, 1914-1918. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Although primarily biographical, this book also offers valuable insights into Bennett’s work during and after World War I. Defends Bennett’s post-1914 work, contending that it was influenced by Bennett’s exhaustion of his Five Towns material, by his steadily deteriorating relationship with his wife, and by the war itself. Includes an excellent index.

Squillace, Robert. “Arnold Bennett’s Other Selves.” In Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves, and Self-Fashioning, 1880-1930, edited by Marysa Demoor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Discusses the different personae assumed by Bennett to market his various works. Useful for understanding the relationship between Bennett’s detective fiction and his other work.

Squillace, Robert. Modernism, Modernity, and Arnold Bennett. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1997. Argues that Bennett saw more clearly than his novelist contemporaries the emergence of the modern era, which transformed a male-dominated society to one open to all people regardless of class or gender. Very detailed notes and a bibliography acknowledge the work of the best scholars.

Wright, Walter F. Arnold Bennett: Romantic Realist. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971. Sees Bennett as vacillating between the two extremes of Romanticism and realism and describes his novels as mildly experimental.