Editing Arnold Bennett (section)

==Works==
{{See also|List of works by Arnold Bennett}}
From the outset, Bennett believed in the "democratisation of art which it is surely the duty of the minority to undertake".<ref>Bennett (1901), p. 5</ref> He admired some of the [[Literary modernism|modernist]] writers of his time, but strongly disapproved of their conscious appeal to a small élite and their disdain for the general reader. Bennett believed that literature should be inclusive, accessible to ordinary people.<ref name=kk>Koenigsberger, Kurt. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001/acref-9780195169218-e-0037 "Bennett, Arnold"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200605081100/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001/acref-9780195169218-e-0037 |date=5 June 2020 }}, ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2006. Retrieved 4 June 2020</ref>

From the start of his career, Bennett was aware of the appeal of regional fiction. [[Anthony Trollope]], [[George Eliot]] and [[Thomas Hardy]] had created and sustained their own locales, and Bennett did the same with his Five Towns, drawing on his experiences as a boy and young man.<ref>Howarth, p. 76</ref> As a [[Naturalism (literature)|realistic]] writer he followed the examples of the authors he admired – above all [[George Moore (novelist)|George Moore]], but also [[Balzac]], [[Flaubert]] and [[Maupassant]] among French writers, and [[Dostoevsky]], [[Turgenev]] and [[Tolstoy]] among Russians. In writing about the Five Towns, Bennett aimed to portray the experiences of ordinary people coping with the norms and constraints of the communities in which they lived.<ref>Howarth, pp. 13 and 76</ref> [[J. B. Priestley]] considered that the next influence on Bennett's fiction was his time in London in the 1890s, "engaged in journalism and ingenious pot-boiling of various kinds."<ref name=jpb>''Quoted'' in Howarth, pp. 11–12</ref>

===Novels and short stories===
[[File:Enoch Arnold Bennett, Vanity Fair, 1913-04-02.jpg|thumb|Bennett, caricatured by "Owl" in ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', 1913|alt=caricature of sleek, plump and prosperous Bennett, smoking a cigar]]
Bennett is remembered chiefly for his novels and short stories. The best known are set in, or feature people from, the six towns of the Potteries of his youth. He presented the region as "the Five Towns", which correspond closely with their originals: the real-life [[Burslem]], [[Hanley]], [[Longton, Staffordshire|Longton]], [[Stoke-upon-Trent|Stoke]] and [[Tunstall, Staffordshire|Tunstall]] become Bennett's Bursley, Hanbridge, Longshaw, Knype and Turnhill.<ref>Drabble, p. 4</ref>{{refn|The omitted town is [[Fenton, Staffordshire|Fenton]], an omission that still rankles with some local people in the 21st century.<ref>Ault, Richard. [https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/some-people-believe-city-five-2492949 "Some people believe this city has five towns"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190204113135/https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/some-people-believe-city-five-2492949 |date=4 February 2019 }}, ''Stoke on Trent Sentinel'', 4 February 2019</ref>|group=n}} These "Five Towns" make their first appearance in Bennett's fiction in ''[[Anna of the Five Towns]]'' (1902) and are the setting for further novels including ''Leonora'' (1903), ''Whom God Hath Joined'' (1906), ''The Old Wives' Tale'' (1908) and the [[Clayhanger]] trilogy – ''Clayhanger'' (1910), ''Hilda Lessways'' (1911) and ''These Twain'' (1916) – as well as for dozens of short stories. Bennett's fiction portrays the Five Towns with what ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' calls "an ironic but affectionate detachment, describing provincial life and culture in documentary detail, and creating many memorable characters".<ref name=ocel/> In later life Bennett said that the writer [[George Moore (novelist)|George Moore]] was "the father of all my Five Towns books" as it was reading Moore's 1885 novel ''A Mummer's Wife'', set in the Potteries, that "opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district I had blindly inhabited for over twenty years".<ref>Hepburn (1970), p. 139</ref>

It was not only locations on which Bennett drew for his fiction. Many of his characters are discernibly based on real people in his life. His Lincoln's Inn friend John Eland was a source for Mr Aked in Bennett's first novel, ''A Man from the North'' (1898);<ref>Drabble, p. 49</ref> ''A Great Man'' (1903) contains a character with echoes of his Parisienne friend Chichi;<ref>Drabble, p. 115</ref> Darius Clayhanger's early life is based on that of a family friend and Bennett himself is seen in Edwin in ''Clayhanger''.<ref>Drabble, pp. 53 and 174–175</ref> He has been criticised for making literary use in that novel of the distressing details of his father's decline into senility, but in Pound's view, in committing the details to paper Bennett was unburdening himself of painful memories.<ref>Pound, p. 121</ref>

''These Twain'' is Bennett's "last extended study of Five Towns life".<ref>Lucas, p. 153</ref> The novels he wrote in the 1920s are largely set in London and thereabouts: ''[[Riceyman Steps]]'' (1923), for instance, generally regarded as the best of Bennett's post-war novels,<ref>Drabble, p. 276</ref> was set in [[Clerkenwell]]: it was awarded the [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize|James Tait Black]] novel prize for 1923, "the first prize for a book I ever had", Bennett noted in his journal on 18 October 1924.<ref>Bennett (1933), p. 63</ref> His ''Lord Raingo'' (1926), described by Dudley Barker as "one of the finest of political novels in the language",<ref>Barker, p. 224</ref> benefited from Bennett's own experience in the Ministry of Information and his subsequent friendship with Beaverbrook:<ref>Drabble, p. 300</ref> John Lucas states that "As a study of what goes on in the corridors of power [''Lord Raingo''] has few equals".<ref>Lucas, p. 305</ref> And Bennett's final – and longest – novel, ''[[Imperial Palace (novel)|Imperial Palace]]'' (1930), is set in a grand London hotel reminiscent of the [[Savoy Hotel|Savoy]], whose directors assisted him in his preliminary research.<ref>Pound, p. 336</ref>

Bennett usually gave his novels subtitles; the most frequent was "A fantasia on modern themes",{{refn|There were six "Fantasias": ''The Grand Babylon Hotel'' (1902); ''Teresa of Watling Street'' (1904); ''Hugo'' (1906); ''The Ghost'' (1907); ''[[The City of Pleasure (Bennett novel)|The City of Pleasure]]'' (1907) and ''The Vanguard'' (1927).<ref name=ww>Watson and Willison, columns 429–431</ref>|group=n}} individual books were called "A frolic" or "A melodrama", but he was sparing with the label "A novel" which he used for only a few of his books – for instance ''Anna of the Five Towns'', ''Leonora'', ''Sacred and Profane Love'', ''The Old Wives' Tale'', ''The Pretty Lady'' (1918) and ''Riceyman Steps''.<ref name="ww" /> Literary critics have followed Bennett in dividing his novels into groups. The literary scholar Kurt Koenigsberger proposes three categories. In the first are the long narratives – "freestanding, monumental artefacts" – ''Anna of the Five Towns'', ''The Old Wives' Tale'', ''Clayhanger'' and ''Riceyman Steps'', which "have been held in high critical regard since their publication".<ref name="kk" /> Koenigsberger writes that the "Fantasias" such as ''The Grand Babylon Hotel'' (1902), ''Teresa of Watling Street'' (1904) and ''[[The City of Pleasure (Bennett novel)|The City of Pleasure]]'' (1907), have "mostly passed from public attention along with the 'modern' conditions they exploit".<ref name="kk" /> His third group includes "Idyllic Diversions" or "Stories of Adventure", including ''Helen with the High Hand'' (1910), ''The Card'' (1911), and ''The Regent'' (1913), which "have sustained some enduring critical and popular interest, not least for their amusing treatment of cosmopolitanism and provinciality".<ref name="kk" />

Bennett published 96 short stories in seven volumes between 1905 and 1931. His ambivalence about his native town is vividly seen in "The Death of Simon Fuge" in the collection ''The Grim Smile of the Five Towns'' (1907), judged by Lucas the finest of all the stories.<ref name=odnb/> His chosen locations ranged widely, including Paris and Venice as well as London and the Five Towns.<ref name=ww/> As with his novels, he would sometimes give a story a label, calling "The Matador of the Five Towns" (1912) "a tragedy" and "Jock-at-a-Venture" from the same collection "a frolic".<ref name=ww/> The short stories, particularly those in ''Tales of the Five Towns'' (1905), ''The Grim Smile of the Five Towns'' (1907), and ''The Matador of the Five Towns'' contain some of the most striking examples of Bennett's concern for realism, with an unflinching narrative focus on what Lucas calls "the drab, the squalid, and the mundane".<ref name=odnb/> In 2010 and 2011 two further volumes of Bennett's hitherto uncollected short stories were published: they range from his earliest work written in the 1890s, some under the pseudonym Sarah Volatile, to US magazine commissions from the late 1920s.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Arnold|title=Arnold Bennett's Uncollected Short Stories|editor= John Shapcott|location=Leek|publisher=Churnet Valley Books|year=2010|isbn=978-1-90-454674-0}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Arnold|title=Lord Dover and Other Lost Stories|editor=John Shapcott|publisher=Churnet Valley Books|year=2011|isbn=978-1-90-454681-8|location=Leek}}</ref>

===Stage and screen===
In 1931 the critic Graham Sutton, looking back at Bennett's career in the theatre, contrasted his achievements as a playwright with those as a novelist, suggesting that Bennett was a complete novelist but a not-entirely-complete dramatist. His plays were clearly those of a novelist: "He tends to lengthy speeches. Sometimes he overwrites a part as though distrusting the actor. He is more interested in what his people are than in what they visibly do. He 'thinks nowt' of mere slickness of plot."<ref name=sutton>Sutton, Graham. "The Plays of Arnold Bennett", ''The Bookman'', December 1931, p. 165</ref>

[[File:Arnold Bennett The Great Adventure 1913.png|thumb|upright=1.5|left|alt=Scene from a play, with young woman standing in a smart drawing room addressing three seated and two standing men|''The Great Adventure'', 1913]]
Bennett's lack of a theatrical grounding showed in the uneven construction of some of his plays, such as his 1911 comedy ''The Honeymoon'', which played for 125 performances from October 1911.<ref>Wearing, p. 175</ref> The highly successful ''Milestones'' was seen as impeccably constructed but the credit for that was given to his craftsmanlike collaborator, Edward Knoblauch (Bennett being credited with the inventive flair of the piece).<ref name=da/> By far his most successful solo effort in the theatre was ''The Great Adventure'', based on his 1908 novel ''[[Buried Alive (novel)|Buried Alive]]'', which ran in the West End for 674 performances, from March 1913 to November 1914.<ref name=Wearing327/> Sutton praised its "new strain of impish and sardonic fantasy" and rated it a much finer play than ''Milestones''.<ref name=sutton/>

After the First World War, Bennett wrote two plays on metaphysical questions, ''Sacred and Profane Love'' (1919, adapted from his novel) and ''Body and Soul'' (1922), which made little impression. ''[[Saturday Review (London newspaper)|The Saturday Review]]'' praised the "shrewd wit" of the former, but thought it "false in its essentials&nbsp;... superficial in its accidentals".<ref>"Mr Arnold Bennett at the Aldwych", ''The Saturday Review'', 22 November 1919, p. 483</ref> Of the latter, the critic Horace Shipp wondered "how the author of ''Clayhanger'' and ''The Old Wives' Tale'' could write such third-rate stuff".<ref>Shipp, Horace. "Body and Soul: A Study in Theatre Problems", ''The English Review'', October 1922, p. 340</ref> Bennett had more success in a final collaboration with [[Edward Knoblock]] (as Knoblauch had become during the war) with ''Mr Prohack'' (1927), a comedy based on his 1922 novel; one critic wrote "I could have enjoyed the play had it run to double its length", but even so he judged the middle act weaker than the outer two.<ref>Walbrook, H. M. "Plays of the Month", ''The Play Pictorial'', November 1927, p. 10</ref> Sutton concludes that Bennett's ''forte'' was character, but that the competence of his technique was variable.<ref name=sutton/> The plays are seldom revived, although some have been adapted for television.<ref>[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&media=tv&order=asc&q=Arnold+Bennett "Arnold Bennett"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210312093028/https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&media=tv&order=asc&q=Arnold+Bennett |date=12 March 2021 }} BBC Genome. Retrieved 3 June 2020</ref><ref>[https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba124e267 "Arnold Bennett"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200603115559/https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba124e267 |date=3 June 2020 }}, British Film Institute. Retrieved 3 June 2020</ref>

Bennett wrote two opera [[libretti]] for the composer [[Eugene Aynsley Goossens|Eugene Goossens]]: ''Judith'' (one act, 1929) and ''Don Juan'' (four acts, produced in 1937 after the writer's death).<ref>Banfield, Stephen. [[doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O003511|"Goossens, Sir (Aynsley) Eugene"]], ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 1992. Retrieved 10 March 2021.</ref> There were comments that Goossens's music lacked tunes and Bennett's libretti were too wordy and literary.<ref>"Opera at Covent Garden", ''The Musical Times'', July 1937, p. 646; and Page, Philip. "Don Juan de Mañara", ''The Sphere'', 3 July 1937</ref> The critic [[Ernest Newman]] defended both works, finding Bennett's libretto for Judith "a drama told simply and straightforwardly"<ref>Rosen, p. 122</ref> and ''Don Juan'' "the best thing that English opera has so far produced&nbsp;... the most dramatic and stageworthy",<ref>''Quoted'' in ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'',  15 July 1937, p. 8</ref> but though politely received, both operas vanished from the repertory after a few performances.<ref>Rosen, p. 202</ref>

Bennett took a keen interest in the cinema, and in 1920 wrote ''The Wedding Dress'', a scenario for a silent movie, at the request of Jesse Lasky of the [[Famous Players–Lasky|Famous Players]] film company.<ref>Drabble, pp. 266 and 268–269</ref> It was never made, though Bennett wrote a full-length treatment, assumed to be lost until his daughter Virginia found it in a drawer in her Paris home in 1983; subsequently the script was sold to the [[Potteries Museum and Art Gallery]] and was finally published in 2013.<ref>Shapcott, pp. 263–264</ref> In 1928 Bennett wrote the  scenario for the silent film ''[[Piccadilly (film)|Piccadilly]]'', directed by [[E. A. Dupont]] and starring [[Anna May Wong]], described by the [[British Film Institute]] as "one of  the true greats of British silent films".<ref>{{Cite web|title=BFI Screenonline: Piccadilly (1929)|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/486639/|access-date=22 February 2021|website=www.screenonline.org.uk|archive-date=5 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151205074622/http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/486639/|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1929, the year the film came out, Bennett was in discussion with a young [[Alfred Hitchcock]] to script a silent film, ''Punch and Judy'', which foundered on artistic disagreements and  Bennett's refusal to see the film as a "talkie" rather than silent.<ref>Drabble, p.329</ref> His original scenario, acquired by [[Pennsylvania State University]], was published in the UK in 2012.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Arnold|title=Punch and Judy|editor=John Shapcott|others=   Margaret Drabble (foreword)|publisher=Churnet Valley Books|year=2012|isbn=978-1-90-454683-2|location=Leek}}</ref>

=== 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>

===Journals===
Inspired by the ''[[Journal des Goncourt]]'', Bennett kept a journal throughout his adult life. Swinnerton says that it runs to a million words; it has not been published in full.<ref>Swinnerton (1954), p. 15</ref> Edited extracts were issued in three volumes, in 1932 and 1933.<ref name=ww/> According to Hugh Walpole, the editor, [[Newman Flower]], "was so appalled by much of what he found in the journals that he published only brief extracts, and those the safest".<ref name=lhd>Lyttelton and Hart-Davis, p. 176</ref> Whatever Flower censored, the extracts he selected were not always "the safest": he let some defamatory remarks through, and in 1935 he, the publishers and printers had to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiff in one libel suit and £2,500 in another.<ref>"Journals of Arnold Bennett: Libel Action Settled", ''The Times'', 18 April 1935, p. 4; and "High Court of Justice", ''The Times'', 23 November 1935, p. 4</ref>