Arnold Bennett

Lost Icon

By: Patrick Donovan

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Hardcover | 3 August 2022

At a Glance

Hardcover
224 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
16.8 x 24.1 x 3.2

Hardcover

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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. His life represents the ultimate rags-to-riches story of a man who 'banged on the door of Fortune like a weekly debt collector' as one of his obituaries so vividly put it.

Yet for all his success, few were aware how cursed Bennett felt by his life-long stutter and other debilitating character traits. In the years running up to his death in 1931, his affairs were close to collapse as he fought a losing battle on three fronts: with his estranged wife; with his disenchanted mistress; and from a literary perspective with Virginia Woolf.

As the first full length biography of Bennett since 1974, the work draws on a wealth of unpublished diaries and letters to shed new light on a personality who can be considered a 'Lost Icon' of early Twentieth Century Britain.

About the Author

Patrick Donovan is now a full-time biographer after a career in national newspapers and a City PR agency. He was one of the original team behind the launch of the Independent and has held senior staff positions on the Evening Standard and the Guardian where he was City Editor. Short-listed for the Biographers' Club Tony Lothian Prize, his work on Arnold Bennett is based on research for a Masters Dissertation at Buckingham University.

He lives in North London.

Industry Reviews

"Hated by Woolf, but this life of Arnold Bennett proves the literary snobs wrong" The Sunday Times

"Excellent book" A.N Wilson, The Spectator

"First-rate biography" Roger Lewis, Daily Mail

"sheds new light" Margaret Drabble, The Times Literary Supplement

"This excellent book puts Bennett back on the map" Simon Heffer, The Telegraph

"absorbing biography" D J Taylor, Literary Review

"a work that must now displace [Margaret Drabble's] as the standard account of the novelist's life" Revd Dr John Pridmore, Church Times

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