Anna of the Five Towns (Wordsworth Classics) [Paperback]

In the Bennett novels which at their finest stand up to anything Europe has put out the artist towers above the man of ideas --Elizabeth Bowen --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Set in the late Victorian period, this novel is perceptive novel of provincial life in the Staffordshire potteries. It provides a sympathetic account of the dismal, harsh and occasionally squalid lives of the characters in such a way that they appear interesting.

Enoch Arnold Bennett, the son of a solicitor, was born in Hanley, Staffordshire. At twenty-one, he moved to London, initially to work as a solicitors clerk, but he soon turned to writing popular serial fiction and editing a womens magazine. After the publication of his first novel, A Man From the North in 1898, he became a professional writer. He moved to Paris and became a man of cosmopolitan and discerning tastes. Bennetts great reputation is built upon the success of his novels and short stories set in the Potteries, an area of north Staffordshire that he recreated as the Five Towns. Anna of the Five Towns and The Old Wives Tale show the influence of Flaubert, Maupassant and Balzac as Bennett describes provincial life in great detail. Arnold Bennett is an important link between the English novel and European realism. He wrote several plays and lighter works such as The Grand Babylon Hotel and The Card. Arnold Bennett died in 1931. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.