Leonora

by Arnold Bennett

Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was a British novelist. He was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. At age 21 he went to London as a solicitor's clerk. He won a literary competition in Tit Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full time. From 1900 he devoted himself full time to writing, giving up the editorship and writing much serious criticism, and also theatre journalism, one of his special interests. In 1902 Anna of the Five Towns, the first of a succession of stories which detailed life in the Potteries, appeared. In 1908 The Old Wives' Tale was published, and was an immediate success throughout the English-speaking world. His most famous works are the Clayhanger (1910) trilogy and The Old Wives' Tale. These books draw on his experience of life in the Potteries, as did most of his best work. Among his other books are: The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), The Grim Smile of the Five Towns (1907), Hilda Lessways (1911), The Author's Craft (1914), The Lion's Share (1916), and The Roll-Call (1919).

Genres: Classics

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk at the age of 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine before becoming a full-time author in 1900. Always a devotee of French culture in general and French literature in particular, he moved to Paris in 1903; there the relaxed milieu helped him overcome his intense shyness, particularly with women. He spent ten years in France, marrying a Frenchwoman in 1907. In 1912 he moved back to England. He and his wife separated in 1921, and he spent the last years of his life with a new partner, an English actress. He died in 1931 of typhoid fever, having unwisely drunk tap-water in France.
Many of Bennett's novels and short stories are set in a fictionalised version of the Staffordshire Potteries, which he called The Five Towns. He strongly believed that literature should be accessible to ordinary people and he deplored literary cliques and élites. His books appealed to a wide public and sold in large numbers. For this reason, and for his adherence to realism, writers and supporters of the modernist school, notably Virginia Woolf, belittled him, and his fiction became neglected after his death. During his lifetime his journalistic "self-help" books sold in substantial numbers, and he was also a playwright; he did less well in the theatre than with novels but achieved two considerable successes with Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913).
Studies by Margaret Drabble (1974), John Carey (1992), and others have led to a re-evaluation of Bennett's work. The finest of his novels, including Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910) and Riceyman Steps (1923), are now widely recognised as major works.

Reviews

[Julianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting portrayal of a privileged mom with grown children over 100 years ago in Stoke-on-Trent. The ending was a little too neat, but maybe this is what happens to people who do everything right. Arnold Bennett wrote for a women's magazine and he has a lot of insight into things that would appeal to women...

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was going really well, sound characters, plenty of suspense, a nice dog.....and then the end, pah, a happy ending absolutely ruined it. Bennett should have had the courage to end it the way it seemed to be going. Maybe this is why he's largely forgotten as a writer.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arnold Bennett never disappoints.
A lovely story about Leonora and her children as they grow up.
A husband who speculates and a lover!

[Ken Kase · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up on this. Sooo descriptive of people’s relationships, clearly setting up an inheritance problem and resolution. Just not enough to keep me reading.

[Scout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this story. The author's intimate description of a waltz was the most romantic of all the Regency/Victorian romances I have ever read, and it has been at least a thousand by now.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliantly written, but somehow lacks a story.
Leonara is a nice woman approaching middle age, or what was middle age then, meaning 40 or so. One of her daughters excells as a singer in Gilbert&Sullivan operas. She falls in love with some American, but in the end, stays with family.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all Bennett's books I thoroughly enjoyed this. He is such a brilliant writer and much overlooked these days. He writes so well from the woman's point of view.