Editing Arnold Bennett (section)

=== Journalism and self-help books ===
Bennett published more than two dozen non-fiction books, among which eight could be classified as "self-help": the most enduring is ''[[How to Live on 24 Hours a Day]]'' (1908), which is still in print and has been translated into several languages. Other "self-help" volumes include ''How to Become an Author'' (1903), ''The Reasonable Life'' (1907), ''[[Literary Taste: How to Form It]]'' (1909), ''The Human Machine'' (1908), ''Mental Efficiency'' (1911), ''The Plain Man and his Wife'' (1913), ''Self and Self-Management'' (1918) and ''How to Make the Best of Life'' (1923). They were, says Swinnerton, "written for small fees and with a real desire to assist the ignorant".<ref>Swinnerton (1978), p.104</ref> According to the Harvard academic Beth Blum, these books "advance less scientific versions of the argument for mental discipline espoused by William James".<ref>Blum, p. 133</ref>

In his biography of Bennett Patrick, Donovan argues that in the US "the huge appeal to the ordinary readers" of his self-help books "made his name stand out vividly from other English writers across the massive, fragmented American market."<ref name=Donovan>Donovan, p. 99</ref> As Bennett put it to his London-based agent [[J. B. Pinker]], these "pocket philosophies are just the sort of book for the American public". However, ''How to Live on 24 Hours'' was aimed initially at "the legions of clerks and typists and other meanly paid workers caught up in the explosion of British office jobs around the turn of the century … they offered a strong message of hope from somebody who so well understood their lives".<ref name=Donovan/>

Bennett never lost his journalistic instincts, and throughout his life sought and responded to newspaper and magazine commissions with varying degrees of enthusiasm: "from the start of the 1890s right up to the week of his death there would never be a period when he was not churning out copy for newspapers and magazines".<ref>Donovan, p. 46</ref> In a journal entry at the end of 1908, for instance, he noted that he had written "over sixty newspaper articles" that year;<ref>Swinnerton (1954), p. 252</ref> in 1910 the figure was "probably about 80 other articles". While living in Paris he was a regular contributor to ''T. P.'s Weekly''; later he reviewed for ''[[The New Age]]'' under the pseudonym Jacob Tonson and was associated with the ''[[New Statesman]]'' as not only a writer but also a director.<ref>Barker, p. 185</ref>