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.
26
His wealth and influence, as well as his painstaking realism, earned him the scorn of the modernist writers of the next generation.
Preparing a defence against the allegations, Joyce's lawyer, Morris L. Ernst
, obtained hundreds of written opinions from educators, librarians, writers, clergy, and business people. Among those quoted in Ernst's court brief were Rebecca West
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...
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...
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, was withdrawn from publication after threats of legal action.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.
316
Literary responses
Hannah Lynch
This article caused controversy, as did HL
's claim, in the correspondence which followed, to speak for authentic Parisian intellectual circles, not the decadent ones admired by the English and Americans. In this argument she...
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen.
61, 65
Textual Production
Naomi Mitchison
By the early 1930s NM
was making as much by her writing, in real terms, as nearly fifty years later. She reviewed novels—reading at great speed even while breast-feeding, since she claimed that [i]f the...
Textual Production
Deborah Moggach
DM
has written a number of TV screenplays, both from her own prose and that of others, and in the form of original scripts, from which several of her novels were expanded. She has adapted...
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.
Miller, Anita, and George Paston. “Afterword”. A Writer of Books, Academy Chicago Publishers, pp. 261-5.
264
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, p. v - xiv.
vii
Arnold Bennett
(a friend) described her as an ample little lady, with a quick cheerful laugh...
Residence
George Paston
The novelist Arnold Bennett
, with whom they exchanged frequent visits, described their home as a place of literature, quietude, the restraint of an eighteenth-century demeanor—and sincere artistic purpose too.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
197
Stetz, Margaret, and George Paston. “Introduction”. A Writer of Books, Academy Chicago Publishers, p. v - xiv.
vii
Friends, Associates
George Paston
GP
was on good terms with Arnold Bennett
, who admired her writing as well as her mind, describing her in his journal as the most advanced and intellectually fearless woman I have met.
Stetz, Margaret, and George Paston. “Introduction”. A Writer of Books, Academy Chicago Publishers, p. v - xiv.
xiv
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
