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, 1985.
26
His wealth and influence, as well as his painstaking realism, earned him the scorn of the modernist writers of the next generation.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photo of a young Arnold Bennett, seen half-profile in a stiff collar.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Virginia Woolf
The original audience included Q. D. Roth (later Leavis) and Kathleen Raine . Women writers who later counted it an important influence on them included such disparate figures as Muriel Box and Rumer Godden ...
Literary responses Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The timing, almost coincident with the outbreak of war, caused de la Mare to add that the touch of irony in its title at the present moment is unintentional. He likened EWW to Samuel Smiles
Literary responses George Paston
Arnold Bennett seems to have admired this novel enough to review it twice. Writing as Sarah Volatile (from sal volatile, meaning smelling salts) in Hearth and Home, he recommended it to his readers as...
Literary responses Emmuska Baroness Orczy
EBO claimed that English readers (men for the most part) had told her that she had created a perfect representation of an English gentleman.
Orczy, Emmuska, Baroness. Links in the Chain of Life. Hutchinson, 1947.
7
Arnold Bennett , discoursing on the greater importance...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
Arnold Bennett excoriated MAW 's typical heroines as harrowing dolls and fantasised a brutal fate for them in the form of gang rape.
qtd. in
Small, Helen. “Mrs. Humphry Ward and the First Casualty of War”. Women’s Fiction and the Great War, edited by Suzanne Raitt and Trudi Tate, Clarendon, 1997, pp. 18-46.
39
As critic Helen Small remarks, Harvest departs from the pattern whereby...
Literary responses Sarah Grand
In an interview in 1895, SG distinguished between her personal beliefs and those professed by her characters: The views of Evadne or Angelica . . . are not necessarily to be accepted as my views...
Literary responses Sarah Grand
Reviewers in the Independent and The Bookman disliked this novel. The Bookman called it vulgar, and worse than vulgar.
qtd. in
Grand, Sarah. Sex, Social Purity and Sarah Grand: Volume 1. Editor Heilmann, Ann, Routledge, 2000.
518
Arnold Bennett , in Fame and Fiction: An Enquiry into Certain Popularities (1891), was equally...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Admirers of Lady Audley included Thackeray , according to his daughter Anne .
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland, 1979.
9
Arnold Bennett gave it very high praise. Of the passage in which Lucy Audley decides to try to murder Robert, he...
Literary responses George Eliot
GE began to be remembered quite inaccurately as a humourless and self-righteous preacher, to whom invention was less important than exhortation.
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
xix
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
362
In 1895George Saintsbury , one of the shapers of English Literature...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
By 1901 MEB was so firmly established in the literary scene that Arnold Bennett commented: She is a part of England . . . she has woven herself into it.
qtd. in
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland, 1979.
2
She declined this year...
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
By the time of her death, MEB 's novels had received praise from many great writers of her day, including George Moore , Arnold Bennett , Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy . Her astonishingly...
Literary responses John Galsworthy
JG 's literary reputation, established with his first Forsyte novel, was strong in the late Edwardian period and the early 1920s, but deteriorated later in the decade (though he remained very popular with the public)...
Literary responses Rhoda Broughton
An article by Eliza Lynn Linton written in June 1887 (well after the ebbing of RB 's early, scandalous reputation) judged that her books were always essentially love-stories, and nothing else,
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Miss Broughton’s Novels”. Temple Bar, Vol.
80
, June 1887, pp. 196-09.
203
but that without...
Literary responses Margaret Kennedy
The novel's initial favourable reviews came from an earlier generation of authors, including George Moore , A. E. Housman , Thomas Hardy , Arnold Bennett , J. M. Barrie , and H. G. Wells ...
Literary responses Catherine Carswell
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.