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.
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Ella D'Arcy
Lane
and Harland
were centres of literary social life in London. EDA
had many friends among writers, many of them New Women. They included Evelyn Sharp
, and Constance Smedley
(who found her entirely sincere...
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...
Reception
Ella D'Arcy
EDA
's slim output has made it easier for posterity to ignore her. But both Arnold Bennett
and Ford Madox Ford
thought highly of her.
Fisher, Benjamin Franklin. “Ella D’Arcy: A Commentary with a Primary and Annotated Secondary Bibliography”. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Vol.
35
, No. 2, pp. 179-11.
204
Mix, Katherine Lyon. A Study in Yellow: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="j">The Yellow Book</span> and Its Contributors. Greenwood Press.
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
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
Textual Features
Willa Cather
Here she complains that the modern novel has been taken over by [t]he property-man, by an obsession with the vivid presentation of material objects.
Cather, Willa. On Writing. Editor Tennant, Stephen, Alfred A. Knopf.
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...
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...
Reception
Rhoda Broughton
This novel deals with miseries arising from domestic misunderstanding, in this case between Lettice Trent, who keeps house for her brother, and his new wife, Marie. While he was disconcerted by the subject-matter (Conceive...
