Arnold Bennett Self-Help Classics Collection: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Mental Efficiency, The Human Machine, Literary Taste

by Arnold Bennett

Four self-help classics in one!

In one volume, four of author Arnold Bennett's most popular and influential classic works of self-improvement. Learn the practical secrets of self-mastery and intellectual self-enrichment from one of the early twentieth century's pioneers of the genre. Included in this Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English novelist and playwright best known for his novels Anna of the Five Towns and Clayhanger . He was born in Hanley, Staffordshire, and educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School. After working as a solicitor and journalist, Bennett began writing fiction and achieved success with his first novel, A Man from the North , in 1898. Throughout his career, Bennett wrote more than 50 books, including novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction works. He wrote both contemporary and historical novels, and had a particular interest in the lives of the English working class. Bennett was also a prolific playwright and wrote plays for the West End and Broadway. Bennett's works were often praised for their realism and insight into everyday life. His novel The Old Wives' Tale was deemed a classic and was even adapted into a television series in the 1980s. In addition to his novels, Bennett wrote many essays and articles on topics such as politics, art and literature. Bennett's writing style was known for its use of colloquial language, and he was a pioneer of the “regional novel” genre. His work has since been celebrated by modern writers, such as Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence. In 1931, Bennett died of bronchitis at the age of 64. He is remembered today as one of the most influential British novelists of the early 20th century.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

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

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always like Arnold Bennett - Anna of the Five Towns being perhaps his most familiar work to me as I was reading the classics. This complete works seemed too large for my Kindle ... kept getting lost.
The formatting on the Kindle makes this massive tome is very difficult to follow. There are so many complete books in this compilation which makes it very easy to lose you way. There are so many chapter ones, twos etc, and the title pages and chapter headings are not at all clear so I kept losing my place and finding that I had missed out an entire section. However, having said that, I love Arnold Bennett's writing, but in future will get his works as individual books which will be much easier.His complete works include lots of essays that I wasn't expecting to enjoy as much as I did, but also some really great stories. He really was a master story teller and creator of fantastic and believable characters. Very much of his time, the language is not easy - but once you get used to the slightly old fashioned tone of his writing they are really great stories and well worth the effort.