The Old Wives' Tale (The ^AWorld's Classics) - Softcover

Bennett, Arnold

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9780192829665: The Old Wives' Tale (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192829661 ISBN 13: 9780192829665

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

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The Old Wives' Tale (1908) celebrates the romance of even the most ordinary lives as it tells the story of the two Baines sisters, placid stay-at-home Constance and rebellious Sophia, from their girlhood to their last days. They move from the family drapery shop in provincial Bursley during the repressive mid-Victorian period to old age in the modern era of mass marketing and the internal combustion engine. The setting ranges from the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Bursley to a Paris brothel, the action from the controlled domestic routine of the Baines household to wife murder and the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1.
This edition of The Old Wives' Tale gives fascinating critical insights into Bennett's most wide-ranging novel, considered by many to be his masterpiece.

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From the Inside Flap:

With a New Introduction by Francine Prose
Commentary by Rebecca West, W. Somerset Maugham,
Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells, Henry James, and J. B. Priestley

" [Arnold Bennett's] superb Old Wives' Tale, wandering from person to person and from scene to scene, is by far the finest 'long novel' that has been written in English and in the English fashion, in this generation."
--H. G. Wells

First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters--shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia--over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

"Like Wordsworth, [Arnold Bennett] has triumphed over the habitual; he has not let it disguise the particle of beauty from him."--Rebecca West

ARNOLD BENNETT (1867-1931) looked to Flaubert, Maupassant, and Balzac for inspiration in the fashioning of his own acutely realistic novels, including his masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale (1908). His first novel was A Man from the North (1898), and he is also known for his Clayhanger trilogy (1910-16).

The author of thirteen books of fiction, FRANCINE PROSE is a
fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers.

About the Author:

Professor of English Literature at the University of Sydney, Margaret Harris is also the editor of Arnold Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns, published in World's Classics in January 1995.

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