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The Five Towns #4
The Grim Smile of the Five Towns
Thirteen stories describe the experiences of Vera Cheswardine, whose family manufactures pottery, and working-class families living in the Five Towns district.
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1907
About the author
Arnold Bennett
1,211 books326 followersEnoch 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 13, 2026
Thirteen short stories set in the Five Towns in the early 1900s. They’re surprisingly varied in style and length, but all are rooted in their location.
1. The Lion’s Share, 4*
A cautionary tale, but one that doesn’t moralise.
“Horace is the hero, or the villain, of the history.”
He’s the much older half-brother of Sidney, and is almost too good to be true, whereas Sydney is almost too beautiful to be true, but he’s a delicate child - who later takes to the banjo!
However, the people of Bursley gossip:
“He didn’t do it on purpose, but…”
There’s a nice symmetry at the end of the story.
2. Baby’s Bath, 2*
“A typical baby - it lived the life of the senses. It was utterly selfish.”
This baby adores bathtime, and it’s the highlight of his doting mother’s day. There’s some amusing rivalry for the baby’s affections between the mother and nurse, and Bennett assumes the baby is playing them off against each other.
“The two women folk now candidly and openly worshipped him, forgetting sectarian differences.”
Overall, it’s a little twee, which made an extreme and irrelevant racial slur all the more shocking. But the father is a modern man: he manages the town electricity works, so misses bath time, but he reads up on all the newest childrearing theories, and wants to be more involved.
3. The Silent Brothers, 4*
Now 39 and 42, they had a rift ten years ago, and although they still share a house, have never spoken to each other since, though they communicate by slate when necessary.
“Bursley regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity… And no one suggested the lunatic asylum. Such is the force of pride, of rank stupidity, and of habit.”
The men are stubborn, proud, and selfish, and three women get the upper hand.
4. The Nineteenth Hat, 3*
The first of four stories about Vera and Stephen Cheswardaine, a wealthy couple on honeymoon. She is very young and has a particular love of hats, but he thinks she has enough and wants to exert some authority (he’s at least a decade older). She gets one anyway.
“When once you have taken the ticket off a hat the secret of its price is gone forever.”
The fallout is nasty but fun: each is determined to ‘win’ and sees it as totemic in their marriage.
5. Vera’s First Christmas Adventure, 4*
Six years later, the Cheswardine’s have no children. But Vera has a generous allowance and indulges her passion for fashion - clothes and furnishing, often spending it all before the next installment, which creates difficulties:
“She never had money, yet money was always running through her fingers.”
It’s another tactical battle between husband and wife. Broadly predictable, but amusing.
6. The Murder of the Mandarin, 3*
“Anyone might commit murder.”
Quite the dinner party discussion. It arises from murders in nearby Harrisford, and they discuss whether if, by wishing an unknown mandarin dead, with no consequences other than a wish being granted, they would! Moral dilemmas - and another marital battle of wits.
7. Vera’s Second Christmas Adventure, 3*
I was getting a little tired of the Cheswardines, especially Vera, who have moved to a fashionable suburb:
“Graced by the near presence of a countess.”
But Vera, still childless, is bored, and lacks an audience for her pretty dresses. She wants Christmas in a fashionable Swiss resort, but he does not, so like the brothers of an earlier story, they are not speaking. Flirtation, dreams, and foreboding feature.
8. The Burglary, 3*
Sir Jehosophat (Jee) Dain is a successful industrialist, but hated by the competition and his staff and snubbed as new money by aristocrats like Countess Chell: his "calculated philanthropy” versus her “condescending meddlesomeness”. He has a hideous portrait, given to him by “toadies” that he wants to be rid of.
9. News of the Engagement, 4*
A delightful first-person narrative in which the only son of a widow travels home from London to break the happy news to his mother, feeling a little guilty that she has never met his fiancée. She is giddy with excitement at seeing him, and he sees her in a new light.
10. Beginning the New Year, 4*
Toby Hall, in his fifties, misses a train and finds himself wandering his former home town. He’s lived in America for many years and notes the changes. But not everything has changed, and a tacit “union of respectabilities” emerges.
11. From One Generation to Another, 5*
“Families spring into splendour out of nothing in the course of a couple of generations, and as often as not sink back again into nothing in the course of two generations more.”
Apparently, there is an immense wealth divide in the Five Towns. Harold and Maud Etches are a flamboyantly wealthy young couple.Their great uncle Dan (they’re second cousins) looks shabby and poor (he’s not the latter), but they’re all fond of each other.
“There’s a great deal of snobbery in the Five Towns, but it does not exist between relatives.”
Although he’s never been married, he gives each of them marital advice. Money isn’t the only thing worth passing down generations.
12. The Death of Simon Fuge, 2*
At 50 pages of small print, this didn’t fit with the others, and felt overly long for too little interest. It’s told by a man from the British Museum visiting Mr Brindley re ceramics. The Londoner has opinions about the landscape:
“It was squalid ugliness but it was squalid ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became sublime… It was an incredible station in the centre of a rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and cinders.”
His host also has strong opinions, mostly about art, music, and literature. He and his wife spar with each other in a clearly affectionate and largely equal way that is a refreshing change from the Cheswardines.
However, most of this is about the recent death of local artist Simon Fuge, who famously wrote about a night on a boat on Ilam Lake with two sisters. The visitor wants to meet the sisters and find out about it, though it’s not the purpose of his trip. Meh.
13. In a New Bottle, 3*
A rather lame but dark anecdote told as a short story, but the characterisation makes it worthwhile - and the fact it’s only two pages.
“He and the cheesemonger were old friends, he having buried three of the cheesemonger’s children.”
The author and location
Arnold Bennett is sadly overlooked these days (and sometimes confused with Alan Bennett, who I also enjoy). He wrote novels and short stories between the 1890s and 1930s (this was published in 1907). They are mostly set in the (fictional) Five Towns of the (real) potteries area of Staffordshire in the midlands. They are broadly realist, but often with a dash of humour.
This collection is available free, on Gutenberg: HERE (as are most of his other works). Two stories feature Gorgonzola as a key plot device, two feature people not speaking to each other, and banter between husbands and wives is common. These are mostly set in Bursley “an ancient, blasé sort of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants”.
He is particularly known for:
• Anna of the Five Towns, which I reviewed HERE.
• The Old Wives’ Tale, which I reviewed HERE.
• The Clayhanger trilogy.
1. The Lion’s Share, 4*
A cautionary tale, but one that doesn’t moralise.
“Horace is the hero, or the villain, of the history.”
He’s the much older half-brother of Sidney, and is almost too good to be true, whereas Sydney is almost too beautiful to be true, but he’s a delicate child - who later takes to the banjo!
However, the people of Bursley gossip:
“He didn’t do it on purpose, but…”
There’s a nice symmetry at the end of the story.
2. Baby’s Bath, 2*
“A typical baby - it lived the life of the senses. It was utterly selfish.”
This baby adores bathtime, and it’s the highlight of his doting mother’s day. There’s some amusing rivalry for the baby’s affections between the mother and nurse, and Bennett assumes the baby is playing them off against each other.
“The two women folk now candidly and openly worshipped him, forgetting sectarian differences.”
Overall, it’s a little twee, which made an extreme and irrelevant racial slur all the more shocking. But the father is a modern man: he manages the town electricity works, so misses bath time, but he reads up on all the newest childrearing theories, and wants to be more involved.
3. The Silent Brothers, 4*
Now 39 and 42, they had a rift ten years ago, and although they still share a house, have never spoken to each other since, though they communicate by slate when necessary.
“Bursley regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity… And no one suggested the lunatic asylum. Such is the force of pride, of rank stupidity, and of habit.”
The men are stubborn, proud, and selfish, and three women get the upper hand.
4. The Nineteenth Hat, 3*
The first of four stories about Vera and Stephen Cheswardaine, a wealthy couple on honeymoon. She is very young and has a particular love of hats, but he thinks she has enough and wants to exert some authority (he’s at least a decade older). She gets one anyway.
“When once you have taken the ticket off a hat the secret of its price is gone forever.”
The fallout is nasty but fun: each is determined to ‘win’ and sees it as totemic in their marriage.
5. Vera’s First Christmas Adventure, 4*
Six years later, the Cheswardine’s have no children. But Vera has a generous allowance and indulges her passion for fashion - clothes and furnishing, often spending it all before the next installment, which creates difficulties:
“She never had money, yet money was always running through her fingers.”
It’s another tactical battle between husband and wife. Broadly predictable, but amusing.
6. The Murder of the Mandarin, 3*
“Anyone might commit murder.”
Quite the dinner party discussion. It arises from murders in nearby Harrisford, and they discuss whether if, by wishing an unknown mandarin dead, with no consequences other than a wish being granted, they would! Moral dilemmas - and another marital battle of wits.
7. Vera’s Second Christmas Adventure, 3*
I was getting a little tired of the Cheswardines, especially Vera, who have moved to a fashionable suburb:
“Graced by the near presence of a countess.”
But Vera, still childless, is bored, and lacks an audience for her pretty dresses. She wants Christmas in a fashionable Swiss resort, but he does not, so like the brothers of an earlier story, they are not speaking. Flirtation, dreams, and foreboding feature.
8. The Burglary, 3*
Sir Jehosophat (Jee) Dain is a successful industrialist, but hated by the competition and his staff and snubbed as new money by aristocrats like Countess Chell: his "calculated philanthropy” versus her “condescending meddlesomeness”. He has a hideous portrait, given to him by “toadies” that he wants to be rid of.
9. News of the Engagement, 4*
A delightful first-person narrative in which the only son of a widow travels home from London to break the happy news to his mother, feeling a little guilty that she has never met his fiancée. She is giddy with excitement at seeing him, and he sees her in a new light.
10. Beginning the New Year, 4*
Toby Hall, in his fifties, misses a train and finds himself wandering his former home town. He’s lived in America for many years and notes the changes. But not everything has changed, and a tacit “union of respectabilities” emerges.
11. From One Generation to Another, 5*
“Families spring into splendour out of nothing in the course of a couple of generations, and as often as not sink back again into nothing in the course of two generations more.”
Apparently, there is an immense wealth divide in the Five Towns. Harold and Maud Etches are a flamboyantly wealthy young couple.Their great uncle Dan (they’re second cousins) looks shabby and poor (he’s not the latter), but they’re all fond of each other.
“There’s a great deal of snobbery in the Five Towns, but it does not exist between relatives.”
Although he’s never been married, he gives each of them marital advice. Money isn’t the only thing worth passing down generations.
12. The Death of Simon Fuge, 2*
At 50 pages of small print, this didn’t fit with the others, and felt overly long for too little interest. It’s told by a man from the British Museum visiting Mr Brindley re ceramics. The Londoner has opinions about the landscape:
“It was squalid ugliness but it was squalid ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became sublime… It was an incredible station in the centre of a rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and cinders.”
His host also has strong opinions, mostly about art, music, and literature. He and his wife spar with each other in a clearly affectionate and largely equal way that is a refreshing change from the Cheswardines.
However, most of this is about the recent death of local artist Simon Fuge, who famously wrote about a night on a boat on Ilam Lake with two sisters. The visitor wants to meet the sisters and find out about it, though it’s not the purpose of his trip. Meh.
13. In a New Bottle, 3*
A rather lame but dark anecdote told as a short story, but the characterisation makes it worthwhile - and the fact it’s only two pages.
“He and the cheesemonger were old friends, he having buried three of the cheesemonger’s children.”
The author and location
Arnold Bennett is sadly overlooked these days (and sometimes confused with Alan Bennett, who I also enjoy). He wrote novels and short stories between the 1890s and 1930s (this was published in 1907). They are mostly set in the (fictional) Five Towns of the (real) potteries area of Staffordshire in the midlands. They are broadly realist, but often with a dash of humour.
This collection is available free, on Gutenberg: HERE (as are most of his other works). Two stories feature Gorgonzola as a key plot device, two feature people not speaking to each other, and banter between husbands and wives is common. These are mostly set in Bursley “an ancient, blasé sort of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants”.
He is particularly known for:
• Anna of the Five Towns, which I reviewed HERE.
• The Old Wives’ Tale, which I reviewed HERE.
• The Clayhanger trilogy.
March 8, 2016
Pure whimsy - which was a surprise to me (I'd been expecting 'Love on the Dole' level grit). It's really just comedy of manners, this, and has the proto-sitcom feel of the always marvellous 'Diary of a Nobody' crossed with Jerome K Jerome. in fact, like Three Men on a Boat, it even has a cheese anecdote (my favourite bit of T.M.I.A.B. is said cheese anecdote - it's one you can show anyone).
If you do have a Stoke interest it's worth being aware of, but it's all rather gentle otherwise. Not altogether old fashioned, but mostly a 60s Penguin Classic curiosity these days.
If you do have a Stoke interest it's worth being aware of, but it's all rather gentle otherwise. Not altogether old fashioned, but mostly a 60s Penguin Classic curiosity these days.
May 21, 2013
Typical fare from the pen of Arnold Bennett in a series of stories, several of which feature the same married couple, and set in The Lotteries during the late 19th and early 20th century. These whimsical tales also contain dark humour, acerbic wit, great characterisation and excellent observation of human nature. They put me in mind of Dickens at his most light-hearted and brief - certainly an easier read but no less enjoyable - 8/10.
June 5, 2022
This collection contains 13 stories, one of which is novella length, about people living in the Potteries. These contain some wonderful character sketches of Potteries residents, many of whom are executives with pottery-making firms and their families. There is usually light satire and humor, but also insightful characterization and observations, at times biting and at times poignant, of human behavior.
Overall, I enjoyed the stories although the ending ones did not seem quite the quality of the earlier ones. I rated each of the individual stories and the overall average turned out to be 3.6 stars. So a 4 star book, but barely. Here is my story-by-story evaluation in spoilers for space consideration:
Overall, I enjoyed the stories although the ending ones did not seem quite the quality of the earlier ones. I rated each of the individual stories and the overall average turned out to be 3.6 stars. So a 4 star book, but barely. Here is my story-by-story evaluation in spoilers for space consideration:
October 13, 2013
Really enjoyed these stories.
It just shows the grim realities told with humour across the classes of society!
It just shows the grim realities told with humour across the classes of society!
May 8, 2025
The baker’s dozen of 13 short stories in Arnold Bennett’s The Grim Smile of the Five Towns are, for the most part light-hearted narratives of the people of the five towns, namely, Turnhill, Bursley, Hanbridge, Knype, and Longshaw (which are likely thinly-disguised names of the real towns of Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, and Longton) in Shropshire in central England. In fact, the stories are more than light-hearted—some of them are laugh-out-loud hilarious!
The stories concern dynamics of friendships, families, or husband-and-wife couples, but all from the five towns’ working class. And whether it is a first-person narrator, or Bennett himself as the third-person universal witness to all that happens in his stories, the “speaker” instantly engages readers in candid, familiar, and informal tones, as if reader and Bennett/protagonist have known one another for a long time.
The plot lines have a touch of outrageousness upon first encountering readers’ consciousness, but then immediately seem as plausible as changes in the weather. And even within a dozen-or-so pages of short story real estate, it is a testimony of Bennett’s talent as a writer that he can still squeeze in multilayered plots.
“The Silent Brothers,” for example, features two brothers who quarrel over one woman and allow foolish, stubborn pride to not only stop them talking to each other, but also to Annie, the poor woman in question. When a wealthy sister of the two brothers dies, she leaves her fortune to whichever brother marries Annie within a year, and if neither of them marry Annie, then she leaves everything to Annie! The subsequent, sudden speed-dating of Annie by both brothers is condescending and laughable, especially when Annie refuses to be objectified and chooses to teach the brothers a lesson more bitter than the one attempted by their sister.
The longest short story in the collection is “The Death of Simon Fuge,” in which the utterly charming protagonist and first-person narrator, Mr. Loring, is a sort of procurement agent for the British Museum. I found this to be the funniest story of all, not least because of Loring’s flowery turn of phrase. Here’s a sample: “We talked books. We just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes in an agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile.”
I confess that short stories of any kind are not my favorite genre, but I was as delighted with this collection, and enjoyed them as much as Bennet’s longer novels including The Card and Buried Alive.
The stories concern dynamics of friendships, families, or husband-and-wife couples, but all from the five towns’ working class. And whether it is a first-person narrator, or Bennett himself as the third-person universal witness to all that happens in his stories, the “speaker” instantly engages readers in candid, familiar, and informal tones, as if reader and Bennett/protagonist have known one another for a long time.
The plot lines have a touch of outrageousness upon first encountering readers’ consciousness, but then immediately seem as plausible as changes in the weather. And even within a dozen-or-so pages of short story real estate, it is a testimony of Bennett’s talent as a writer that he can still squeeze in multilayered plots.
“The Silent Brothers,” for example, features two brothers who quarrel over one woman and allow foolish, stubborn pride to not only stop them talking to each other, but also to Annie, the poor woman in question. When a wealthy sister of the two brothers dies, she leaves her fortune to whichever brother marries Annie within a year, and if neither of them marry Annie, then she leaves everything to Annie! The subsequent, sudden speed-dating of Annie by both brothers is condescending and laughable, especially when Annie refuses to be objectified and chooses to teach the brothers a lesson more bitter than the one attempted by their sister.
The longest short story in the collection is “The Death of Simon Fuge,” in which the utterly charming protagonist and first-person narrator, Mr. Loring, is a sort of procurement agent for the British Museum. I found this to be the funniest story of all, not least because of Loring’s flowery turn of phrase. Here’s a sample: “We talked books. We just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes in an agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile.”
I confess that short stories of any kind are not my favorite genre, but I was as delighted with this collection, and enjoyed them as much as Bennet’s longer novels including The Card and Buried Alive.
October 21, 2022
If you're looking for unbridled mirth and raucous laughter, don't bother with these short stories. If you looking for excitement, intrigue, mystery and drama, don't bother with these short stories. But, if you're a seeker of humour that raises a heartwarming smile, occasioned by the peculiarities, eccentricities and indiosyncrasies of the inhabitants of the good people of the five towns of The Potteries as they go about their daily, unremarkable lives, then step gently into these pages and enjoy their hospitality.
July 19, 2021
Seems perfunctory to say that these stories aren't fashionable any more, its hard to imagine that there was a time when they were ever fashionable. But they are an amusing set of tales, set among the well to do middle classes of what was once one of the country's leading manufacturing districts. There is a proper sense of place, even if Bennett doesn't delve into the working lives of the wider population of the potteries, and a degree of loyalty to the author's home town(s). This is best exemplified by the long story in which a visitor from the British Museum acknowledges both the hospitality and the deep knowledge of his hosts.
Showing their age but surprising fun.
(I used to have the habit of writing my name at the start of each book I purchased, alongside the year in which I bought it. For some reason I wrote Arnold Bennett 1991 at the front of this, which might excite a future buyer of second hand books).
Showing their age but surprising fun.
(I used to have the habit of writing my name at the start of each book I purchased, alongside the year in which I bought it. For some reason I wrote Arnold Bennett 1991 at the front of this, which might excite a future buyer of second hand books).
January 22, 2013
I have been meaning to read some of Bennett's work, and rather than dive into one of his novels (Clayhanger etc), I thought I'd try some of his short stories; and this book is a collection of tales from 'The Five Towns' that forms the setting for much of his writing.
Although written over a century ago, Bennett's style is very readable. Some readers may find his use of North Staffordshire dialect jars a little (Yes, thou dost lad!), but I think it adds a touch of colour to his characters.
There are thirteen stories in all, and they include a novella 'The Death of Simon Fuge' and four linked tales about the misadventures of Vera, the spoilt but likeable young wife of a rich pottery magnate. As the title suggests, black humour flows throughout many of the stories, and this is best illustrated with 'In a new Bottle' featuring the undertaker, Mr Till.
Bennett's crafted prose recreates the Edwardian Potteries, so step back in time, to the smoke and grime, and meet the folk of the Five Towns.
Although written over a century ago, Bennett's style is very readable. Some readers may find his use of North Staffordshire dialect jars a little (Yes, thou dost lad!), but I think it adds a touch of colour to his characters.
There are thirteen stories in all, and they include a novella 'The Death of Simon Fuge' and four linked tales about the misadventures of Vera, the spoilt but likeable young wife of a rich pottery magnate. As the title suggests, black humour flows throughout many of the stories, and this is best illustrated with 'In a new Bottle' featuring the undertaker, Mr Till.
Bennett's crafted prose recreates the Edwardian Potteries, so step back in time, to the smoke and grime, and meet the folk of the Five Towns.
June 3, 2023
When you find yourself laughing at jokes more than 100 years old, the writer has clearly got something right. Short stories out of context are always a bit hit and miss, and some of these are better than others, but a high enough strike rate to give another set a go sooner rather than later. Or maybe, a novel.
September 13, 2016
This first dip into Arnold Bennett I enjoyed very much. That humour from the north of England may seem like a grim smile but it holds something more delicious. I was surprised at some of the whimsy here but there always seemed to a sting in these tales.
March 20, 2026
Well, that turned out to be a really nice short story collection. The individual stories are generally very satisfying, often with twists but they are gentle and not hard like Saki's or O Henry's. Bennett's prose style has clarity and charm. There is a warmth here and a genuine sympathy for the characters.
The collection was published in 1907. Many of the conventions of Victorian literature still linger. Bennett often pauses the story to chat directly with the reader, but he is much less morally judgmental than most of his contemporaries. These stories remind me strongly of H.G. Wells' KIPPS and MR POLLY, published in the same decade.
It seems I have acquired a new early 20th Century author to admire, by which I mean from between the years of 1900 and 1920. Bennett hasn't yet displaced Conrad in my estimation, or Wells, but on the evidence of this one book I would say he's a strong challenger to Somerset Maugham, partly because he is less patronising.
I was told that the long story 'The Death of Simon Fuge' is the best piece in the book, but I disagree. It's a good story but I actually prefer some of the shorter tales such as 'The Lion's Share', 'The Silent Brothers' and 'The Burglary' (which could almost be an early Chekhov story).
I bought this book in a charity shop in Aberystwyth a month ago. I read the first story and it was such a good piece of literature that I returned to the same charity shop the following day to snap up the four other Bennetts they had, all four for £1.50.
The collection was published in 1907. Many of the conventions of Victorian literature still linger. Bennett often pauses the story to chat directly with the reader, but he is much less morally judgmental than most of his contemporaries. These stories remind me strongly of H.G. Wells' KIPPS and MR POLLY, published in the same decade.
It seems I have acquired a new early 20th Century author to admire, by which I mean from between the years of 1900 and 1920. Bennett hasn't yet displaced Conrad in my estimation, or Wells, but on the evidence of this one book I would say he's a strong challenger to Somerset Maugham, partly because he is less patronising.
I was told that the long story 'The Death of Simon Fuge' is the best piece in the book, but I disagree. It's a good story but I actually prefer some of the shorter tales such as 'The Lion's Share', 'The Silent Brothers' and 'The Burglary' (which could almost be an early Chekhov story).
I bought this book in a charity shop in Aberystwyth a month ago. I read the first story and it was such a good piece of literature that I returned to the same charity shop the following day to snap up the four other Bennetts they had, all four for £1.50.
June 26, 2022
A pleasant series of short stories linked loosely around life in Bennett’s Five Towns.
Not much to say about them in some ways. The tales simply flow out and his prose is easy and accessible. There’s something around the length of the work in hand – by which I mean that short stories are somehow instantly more lightweight. His tone is almost that of a good-humoured old uncle, you can almost see him leaning back in his armchair as he gathers his thoughts, taking his pipe out to tell you the tale. All very cuddly and pleasantly unthreatening, but it lacks the meat of his novels. The Grim Tales are akin to the sort of thing one might expect in the Daily Mail or Woman’s Own, under a headline like “Well Fancy That...”. Nothing whatever wrong with that, but it is a bit of a disappointment next to his longer works. Even the one longer piece in this collection - “The Death of Simon Fuge” - reinforces that notion, as it is noticeably stronger than the others. It’s all a far cry from the likes of The Old Wives’ Tale, for me, a masterpiece to stand alongside any other novel of that period.
Not much to say about them in some ways. The tales simply flow out and his prose is easy and accessible. There’s something around the length of the work in hand – by which I mean that short stories are somehow instantly more lightweight. His tone is almost that of a good-humoured old uncle, you can almost see him leaning back in his armchair as he gathers his thoughts, taking his pipe out to tell you the tale. All very cuddly and pleasantly unthreatening, but it lacks the meat of his novels. The Grim Tales are akin to the sort of thing one might expect in the Daily Mail or Woman’s Own, under a headline like “Well Fancy That...”. Nothing whatever wrong with that, but it is a bit of a disappointment next to his longer works. Even the one longer piece in this collection - “The Death of Simon Fuge” - reinforces that notion, as it is noticeably stronger than the others. It’s all a far cry from the likes of The Old Wives’ Tale, for me, a masterpiece to stand alongside any other novel of that period.
May 10, 2024
This is a collection of short stories. Many of them have a fairy tale like quality. The penultimate story is the best I think and is the longest as well and the most interesting. It describes the impressions left on the author on a visit to the Five Towns from his home in London and the contrasts he experiences.
July 1, 2026
Some good stories, with the exception of the penultimate, which was overlong, rambling and felt like it was intended to pad out the book. Before losing interest in that story, the overall collection was heading to 4 stars, but now I'll give only 3.
March 18, 2018
A couple of stories. Brilliant: Beginning the New Year.
December 22, 2018
Read "Vera's First Christmas Adventure"
September 18, 2020
Blunt northern tales - to be read whilst drinking foaming Bass
April 16, 2024
Stories about the humor of everyday life in the Midlands- some stories better then other, but all very ground in the time they take place- the early 1900s. I will say, better then Wodehouse.
July 14, 2025
2-3 Bennett is great, I am just not a fan of the short story.
May 10, 2015
This is a series of short stories set in the author's native Potteries towns, featuring the new wealthy, middle-class businessmen and occasionally a few workers. He wrote them after he had left the area, but they give a very good portrait of a time, place, people and social order, very different from London society.
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