Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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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.
VH
and Maugham met again in Paris three years later, in 1905, and he introduced her to novelist Arnold Bennett
, with whom she became friends.
qtd. in
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster, 1990.
115
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Wyndham Lewis
A satiric novel by WL
, The Roaring Queen, whose chief targets were Virginia Woolf
and Arnold Bennett
, was withdrawn from publication after threats of legal action. It was not published until 1973.
Oldsey, Bernard Stanley, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 15. Gale Research, 1983, 2 vols.
VH
was fascinated by the mysterious throughout her life. As a small girl, she loved to listen to her mother talk about the White Lady, a spirit haunting the kitchen of Margaret Hunt
's...
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1981.
272-3
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, and Hester Helen Thackeray Fuller. Letters of Anne Thackeray Ritchie. J. Murray, 1924.
285-7
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.
