Arnold Bennett

[KEV67]

I am reading a biography of Arnold Bennett by Patrick Donovan. He was huge from about 1900 to 1930, but is now largely forgotten. I have read one of his books, Old Wives' Tales. I thought that was a remarkable book. It was very true to life. It was about two girls who grow up in draper's shop, and then go their different ways in adult life. Only thing is I am not sure how much I actually enjoyed it.

[KEV67]

No Arnold Bennett fans? I think these days he is most famous for being forgotten. In his day he was massive. Successful in Britain and America. He was successful as a journalist. He wrote potboilers and serious literary classics. He wrote successful plays that were staged in the West End. I wonder how much his reputation suffered from Virginia Woolf's criticism.

[KEV67]

Finished the book. Amazing to read what a huge public figure he was back then. He wrote high-brow literature, although he tended to the middle-brow; he wrote plays; he wrote journalism; he wrote self-help books. He was a very important book critic in his day. He was good friends with Max Beaverbrook. He went to the same clubs as Winston Churchill. He worked on subtle propaganda during WW1. Strange how some writers make it to posterity and others don't. I should try another of his books one day. The only one I saw in Waterstones the other day was Anna of the Five Towns. It was one of his earlier books, set in the Potteries; I dare say in the late Victorian era. He was very into Realism. He came from a working class, well alright then, lower-middle class background from an industrial town up north. He was from the generation before Modernism started to make an impact in literature. I suspect Modernist literature is valued by by the literary curators, but I doubt they were ever read much by the masses. Another type of literature I tend to associate with the 20s and 30s are sardonic books about bright young things in flapper dresses or dinner jackets. Arnold Bennett was interested in his literary reputation, but he was also interested in making money. I suppose Bennett started to seem old-fashioned and was gradually forgotten about.

[Madeleine]

yes you're right he was quite big at one time, I think a TV drama was made of some of his Potteries stories in the 1970s which I vaguely remember.