Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold

Bennett, (Enoch) Arnold (1867-1931), English novelist, playwright, and essayist, born in Hanley, Staffordshire (the real-life model for one of the “Five Towns” of his novels). Bennett was educated at the University of London and for a time was editor of Woman magazine. After 1900 he devoted himself entirely to writing; dramatic criticism was one of his foremost interests. Bennett is best known, however, for his novels, several of which were written during his residence in France where he was inspired by the writings of Zola, Flaubert, Maupassant, and the Goncourt brothers. These include Anna of the Five Towns (1902); his masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale (1908); and the Clayhanger series—Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911), and These Twain (1916)—published collectively in 1926 as The Clayhanger Family. Bennett's fiction is a straightforward yet sympathetic report on the restricted lives of commonplace people living in dingy manufacturing towns. Of his plays, two achieved considerable popularity: Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913), a dramatization of his novel Buried Alive (1908). Later writings include Riceyman Steps (1923), the bleak story of a miserly bookseller who starves himself to death.