Arnold Bennett

During his 1920s heyday, Arnold Bennett was one of Britain’s most celebrated writers. As the author of ‘The Old Wives’ Tale’ and ‘Clayhanger’ he was a household name, writing just as much for the common man as London’s literati. His face was plastered over theatre hoardings and the sides of West End omnibuses. To his public, Bennett stood for financial prudence, self-improvement and quiet domesticity. Yet Bennett’s own affairs were teetering on collapse in the run-up to his death in 1931. He was fighting a losing battle on three fronts: with his estranged wife; with his disenchanted mistress; and from a literary perspective, with Virginia Woolf. This biography draws on a wealth of unpublished diaries and letters to shed new light on the unquiet, and at times tormented, life of a man who can be considered a ‘lost icon’ of early 20th-century Britain.