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...In The Feast of St. Friend, a Christmas book , Arnold Bennett shares his views on Christmas as the season of goodwill. As always, Bennett's writing includes some thought-provoking ideas liberally spiced with his wry sense of humour, and as always too, you can barely belie...

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...The Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It ...

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...tel, but then the body disappears. With the help of his independent daughter Nella and another German prince, Racksole sets out to solve the mystery. Bennett wrote this as a 15-part serial, for a lark, in 15 days, and sold it for 100 pounds. It first appeared in The Golden Penny in 1902, which described it as the most original, amusing, and thrilling serial written in a de...

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...Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say 'lives,' I do not mean exists, nor 'muddles through.' -- Arnold Bennett knew a rat race when he saw one. Every day, his fellow white-collar Londoners followed the same old routine. And they routinely decried the sameness in their lives.-- So Bennett set out to explain how to inject...

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...own provincial life at the end of the nineteenth century, based around the six towns in the county of Staffordshire, England, known as the Potteries. Arnold Bennett chose to fictionalize these towns by changing their names and omitting one (Fenton) as he apparently felt that “Five Towns” was more euphonious than “Six Towns”. The real town names which are thinly disguised i...

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...Arnold Bennett describes a method for enjoying literature, and suggests the contents of a comprehensive library. Chapters 1-10 and 14 describe his method for learning to enjoy literature. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 contain detai...

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...This book is the second in Bennett’s four books about life in the Five Towns (the real life Potteries in Staffordshire). It tells the story of Hilda before her marriage to Edwin Clayhanger (from the first book). Bennett explores Hilda's ambition to mak...

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...his rise from humble beginnings as the son of a washerwoman and sempstress in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in the pottery towns (which Arnold Bennett christened ‘The Five Towns’) of the English Midlands; how, by his own wits, enterprise and ‘nerve’ he rose to wealth, married bliss and public recognition as the youngest-ever mayor of his home town. “’And yet,...

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...In this light-hearted yet thought-provoking collection of articles, Bennett offers his thoughts on exercising the mind, organising your life, the advantages (and disadvantages) of marriage and other pocket philosophies. The book stands the test of time, and much is still relevant and amusing ...

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...Bennett asks us to consider our brains as the most wonderful machine, a machine which is the only thing in this world that we can control. As he writes: I am simply bent on calling your attention to a fact which has perhaps w...

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...Bennett's essays always provide food for thought and bring a wry smile to the lips. Human nature, it appears, changes little over the ages, and Bennett, as always, stands the test of time, though in the case of some of the es...