Phyllis Bentley

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Phyllis Bentley was a prolific and successful novelist, literary critic, short-story writer, children's writer, and journalist, who was productive over a broad span of the twentieth century. Almost all her twenty-eight novels and numerous short stories are set in her native West Riding of Yorkshire and many are historical as well as regional, focussing on the textile trade and the effects of industrialization in that region. A realist with a strong sense of historical process, she sought to write novels which should present life exactly at [sic] it really was, and by so doing help to better the world.
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
107
She was deeply influenced by the Brontë s, and wrote several literary studies of the history of Haworth and the Brontëfamily , as well as of the regional novel and of narrative form.
  • BirthName: Phyllis Eleanor Bentley
    Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981–2025, Numerous volumes.
    3: 64

  • Pseudonym: Mary Elizabeth Carr
  • Indexed: Phyllis E. Bentley
    She published a few early novels as Phyllis E. Bentley, but reverted to Phyllis Bentley as the chosen form of her name. Some library catalogues today tend to give Phyllis Eleanor Bentley
    ; Phyllis Eleanor Bentley
A drawing of Phyllis Bentley wearing small circular glasses, against a white background with a green haze concentrated in the centre of the image and her signature in the lower left, 1937. Cigarette card 3 of 40 from the Famous British Authors series by WD & HO Wills and the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain & Ireland Ltd.

Milestones

19 November 1894

PB was born at Victoria House, Stanley Road, in Halifax, Yorkshire.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981–2025, Numerous volumes.
3: 64
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
12

1901

At the age of six, PB wrote her first poem, The Volcano, which she illustrated and gave to her father as a birthday present.
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
38

1929

In memory of her late father, PB published Carr, a book which she takes great pains to present as a scholarly biography, though it is in fact the story of a fictional character written by another fully-realised fictional character.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research, 1998.
22, 25

Early 1932

PB published Inheritance, her most critically and commercially successful novel and the first in a series of four about the fortunes, generation after generation, of three Yorkshire families.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research, 1998.
25

Earlier 1977

PB and John Ogden together published Haworth of the Brontës; this was to be her final publication before her death.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research, 1998.
22

27 June 1977

PB died at the Ing Royde Home in Broomfield Avenue, Halifax, Yorkshire, in the town where she had spent most of her life.
Johnson, George M., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 191. Gale Research, 1998.
22
“A Glimpse of the Past: The Literary ’Inheritance’ of Dr Phyllis Bentley”. Calderdale Council: Calderdale Libraries: Local History.

Biography

Birth and Family Background

19 November 1894

PB was born at Victoria House, Stanley Road, in Halifax, Yorkshire.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981–2025, Numerous volumes.
3: 64
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
12

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