Editing Arnold Bennett (section)

===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>