Arnold Bennett

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Standard Name: Bennett, Arnold
Birth Name: Enoch Arnold Bennett
Used Form: E. A. Bennett
An extraordinarily prolific English writer of both literary-realist and mass-interest novels, short stories, pocket philosophy self-help manuals, plays, journal articles and book reviews, AB was acclaimed as an artist in his own time and was also politically and culturally influential. He served as director of the Ministry of Propaganda under Lord Beaverbrook in the first world war. He estimated his own output in 1930 as seventy or eighty books written, of which only a handful were well-known.
Staley, Thomas F., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 34. Gale Research, 1985.
26
His wealth and influence, as well as his painstaking realism, earned him the scorn of the modernist writers of the next generation.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Margaret Drabble
Her maternal grandparents were from the Potteries; she retains an affinity with that region and its most significant writer, Arnold Bennett . She describes herself as provincial in background, brought up in and inclined...
Cultural formation George Paston
GP remained single all her life; her plays suggest a skeptical yet sentimental attitude towards marriage. Arnold Bennett records a debate with GP about this topic, in which he tried in vain to oppose her...
Education Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
61, 65
Education Philip Larkin
For ten years from 1930, as both a primary and a secondary-school student, PL attended King Henry VIII School in Coventry (now an independent school for both sexes, but founded in the sixteenth century as...
Family and Intimate relationships Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm was IT 's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
Family and Intimate relationships George Paston
Emily Symonds was named after her mother, born Emily Hannah Evans , who was also interested in books.
Stetz, Margaret, and George Paston. “Introduction”. A Writer of Books, Academy Chicago Publishers, 1999, p. v - xiv.
vii
Arnold Bennett (a friend) described her as an ample little lady, with a quick cheerful laugh...
Fictionalization Violet Hunt
In addition to the autobiographical strain running through some of her own work, VH inspired characters created by several other writers. She is reimagined as Carlotta Peel in Sacred and Profane Love (1905) by Arnold Bennett
Friends, Associates Anne Thackeray Ritchie
In London ATR connected or re-connected with friends including Kipling , Robert Louis Stevenson , Sidney Lee , Arnold Bennett , and Rhoda Broughton .
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1981.
260-1, 272
Friends, Associates Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS was a close friend of Rose Macaulay , with whom in the immediate postwar period she shared entertaining duties at her flat, in something similar to a salon. They apparently met through Macaulay contributing...
Friends, Associates Julia Frankau
Literary figures regularly seen at JF 's afternoon salons included George Moore , Max Beerbohm , Arnold Bennett , Somerset Maugham , Sir William Nicholson , and Sir Henry Irving . It was at one...
Friends, Associates Evelyn Sharp
She became a close friend of Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson , of Hertha Ayrton , physicist and suffragist, and of Ayrton's daughter, Barbara Gould . These two women, mother and daughter, embodied a thread linking...
Friends, Associates Pamela Frankau
Her aunt Eliza Aria introduced the very young PF to many of her older, god-like friends: first of all actress Sybil Thorndike and writers Michael Arlen and Osbert Sitwell .
Frankau, Pamela. I Find Four People. I. Nicholson and Watson, 1935.
133-4
Later came John Van Druten
Friends, Associates May Sinclair
She had an extremely strong sense of privacy. Though at first she was pleased by the suggestion of an American journalist, Witter Bynner , that he should interview her, and though she liked him when...
Friends, Associates Edith Sitwell
By 1919 ES was also friendly with Arnold Bennett and his wife Marguerite . Wyndham Lewis became a great friend, did many drawings of her, and demonstrated a sexual interest in her as well, which...
Friends, Associates Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM continued to entertain in London, hosting such guests as Ethel Smyth , Elizabeth Bowen , Stephen Spender , Max Beerbohm , Hope Mirrlees , Djuna Barnes , Charlie Chaplin , the novelist Henry Green

Timeline

2 September 1914
The British War Propaganda Bureau (newly formed along the lines of a similar body in Germany) summoned twenty-five writers to discuss the production of texts that would boost national feeling and the war effort.
By April 1929
The Book Society (first conceived of by Arnold Bennett ) was launched by Hugh Walpole with himself as chairman; it was the first such society in Britain.

Texts

Bennett, Arnold. Anna of the Five Towns. Chatto and Windus, 1902.
Bennett, Arnold. Fame and Fiction. Books for Libraries Press, 1975.
Bennett, Arnold. Imperial Palace. Cassell, 1930.
Bennett, Arnold. “Journalism for Women. A Practical Guide”. Project Gutenberg.
Bennett, Arnold. Journalism for Women. A Practical Guide. John Lane, 1898.
Bennett, Arnold. Lord Raingo. Cassell, 1926.
Bennett, Arnold. The Old Wives’ Tale. Nelson and Sons, 1908.