Letters of Arnold Bennett

by Arnold Bennett, James Hepburn (Editor)

This conclusion to the 4-volume edition of Arnold Bennett's letters forever alters the traditional view of the writer as a staid, cold-blooded businessman. Here is a portrait of unrivallled intimacy--of Bennett as lover, husband, father, brother and uncle. Culled from several thousand surviving letters, much of the correspondence is printed in full for the first time, and many letters have never before been published.

676 pages, Hardcover

First published July 24, 1986

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

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arnold Bennett ist einer meiner Lieblingsautoren. Und nicht nur wegen der Qualität seiner Bücher, sondern auch nach dem, was ich von seiner Biographie kenne.
Dennoch ist es eher ungewöhnlich, dass ich die Briefe eines Mannes lese. Und dann noch den Band IV, der nur Family Letters enthält. Tatsächlich wollte ich nur mal reinlesen, um zu sehen wie so sein Brief-Stil ist. Aber nach einer Weile sah ich ein, dass ich das tatsächlich Cover-to-Cover lesen würde. Es gibt Passagen, die literarisch prächtig, auch für sich allein stehen könnten, so über die Gefahren des Alkoholkonsums oder über Unpünktlichkeit.

Etwa 85%, oder mehr, der Briefe gehen an drei Personen, seine erste Frau Marguerite, seinen Neffen Richard, und seine zweite Frau Dorothy. Wobei die zweite nicht wirklich seine Gattin war, obwohl sie ihren Namen in Chefton-Bennett ändern ließ, da die erste sich nicht scheiden lassen wollte. Etwas voyeuristisch kommt man sich vor. Und natürlich sind die meisten Briefe von gediegener Langweiligkeit, aber man will doch wissen wie es weitergeht. Vor allem mit der Ehe. Aus den Briefen geht klar hervor, dass die Dame eher nicht so liebenswert gewesen ist (leider gibt es keine Briefe von den Korrespondenten, so dass die Ansicht notwendig einseitig ist.)

Bennett stotterte, und darum wiederholte er die Auseinandersetzungen brieflich. Das zieht sich über Jahre hin. Er nimmt es hin, dass sie ihn mit einem Gigolo betrügt. Wobei betrügt nicht der richtige Ausdruck ist, da es relativ offen geschieht. Sie nimmt ihm übel, dass er berühmter ist als sie.

Und lustigerweise, nachdem er sich endlich trennt, sucht er sich eine Frau, eine Schauspielerin, mit der sich das Spiel fast genau wiederholt. Vielleicht war der Mann doch nicht ganz so schlau, wie man meinen soll. Dorothy war sogar, wenn man dem Herausgeber trauen darf, zumindest indirekt, vielleicht aber auch ganz direkt für den frühen Tod des genialen Mannes verantwortlich.