Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Arnold Bennett
-
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.
VW
published in the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post the first printed version of her influential essay (another work claimed as her literary manifesto
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984, p. ix - xv.
x
) Mr. Bennett
and Mrs. Brown.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan, 1989.
78
Publishing
Ella D'Arcy
After The Bishop's Dilemma D'Arcy apparently worked on other novels, including one on the Shelley circle. She showed the manuscript of one to Arnold Bennett
, who liked it. However, it was not published and...
Publishing
Ella Hepworth Dixon
She contributed fiction, essays, and travel articles to many other journals, including the New York Independent, the Westminster Gazette, Arnold Bennett
's Woman, and the Sketch, writing for the last-named on...
politics
Dora Carrington
The club met for discussion and entertainments every Thursday night in Fitzroy Square, where guests and performers included Winifred Gill
, Shaw
, Yeats
, and Arnold Bennett
. The subscription fee was 5s...
politics
Virginia Woolf
VW
published in The New Statesman two letters on The Intellectual Status of Women. She was responding to views expressed by Desmond MacCarthy
, the Affable Hawk, in a review of Arnold Bennett
's Our Women 1920.
Literary responses
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
By the time of her death, MEB
's novels had received praise from many great writers of her day, including George Moore
, Arnold Bennett
, Robert Louis Stevenson
and Thomas Hardy
. Her astonishingly...
Literary responses
John Galsworthy
JG
's literary reputation, established with his first Forsyte novel, was strong in the late Edwardian period and the early 1920s, but deteriorated later in the decade (though he remained very popular with the public)...
Literary responses
Rhoda Broughton
An article by Eliza Lynn Linton
written in June 1887 (well after the ebbing of RB
's early, scandalous reputation) judged that her books were always essentially love-stories, and nothing else,
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Miss Broughton’s Novels”. Temple Bar, Vol.
Reaction to this book was fiercely negative among traditional Burnsites, especially in Scotland. CC
received threats to her well-being, including one letter signed Holy Willy (after a character satirised by Burns) and containing a...
Literary responses
George Paston
In an article for The Academy entitled Some Younger Reputations, Arnold Bennett
assessed GP
's novels by saying that no matter what their faults, they are the best woman's rights pamphlets ever written.
qtd. in
Miller, Anita, and George Paston. “Afterword”. A Writer of Books, Academy Chicago Publishers, 1999, pp. 261-5.
264
Literary responses
Rosamond Lehmann
Leonard Woolf
(in the The Nation and Athenæum on 10 September 1927), Desmond MacCarthy
, Arnold Bennett
, and Rose Macaulay
all had more or less serious reservations about the book: Macaulay used very readable...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Praised in the Daily Mail and Times Literary Supplement (where the anonymous reviewer was Walter de la Mare
), Dolores was compared to its advantage with works by Ada Leverson
and Arnold Bennett
. ICB
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
As a manifesto for modernism, Jacob's Room divided the critics. T. S. Eliot
wrote in a letter that VW
had now succeeded in freeing her original gift from compromise with the traditional novel.
qtd. in
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
444
Arnold Bennett
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Leonard Woolf's decision proved a mistake. The book was not only praised to the skies by young, advanced reviewers, but also made the secondary Book of the Month for May by the newly-formed Book Society
