The Grand Babylon Hotel - Softcover

Bennett, Arnold

3.48 out of 5 stars

1,334 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1523749253 ISBN 13: 9781523749256

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

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The Grand Babylon Hotel is a novel by Arnold Bennett, about the mysterious disappearance of a German prince. The main protagonists are an American millionaire, Theodore Racksole, and his daughter Nella (Helen). While staying at the supremely exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel, Nella asks for a steak and Bass beer for dinner, but the order is refused. To get her what she wants Racksole buys the entire hotel, for �400,000 "and a guinea" (so the previous owner can say that he haggled with the multi-millionaire businessman). Strange things are happening in the hotel. First, Racksole notices the headwaiter, Jules, winking at his daughter's friend, Reginald Dimmock, while they consume their expensive steak. He dismisses the headwaiter. The next day Miss Spencer, the pretty, efficient hotel clerk who has been employed there for years, disappears. It appears that she just took her things and left, no one knows when or where. And Prince Eugen, a prince regnant of Posen, who was to come to the hotel and meet his youthful uncle Prince Aribert (he and the nephew are of the same age), never turns up.

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About the Author

English author Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931) was a novelist who worked in journalism, propaganda and film. Bennett won a literary competition in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman but was not impressed with the quality of the work so he wrote a serial that later became "The Grand Babylon Hotel". He published the novel "A Man from the North" and later became the magazine's editor. He wrote about books for the Evening Standard newspaper and continued to work on his own novels and non-fiction work. His self-help book "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day" remains in print. In 1903, he moved to Paris to write novels and plays. The French writer Maupassant'a 'Une Vie' inspired "The Old Wives' Tale," which was a success. During WWI, he became Director of Propaganda for France at the Ministry of Information. He refused a knighthood in 1918.

Review

“Randi Saloman’s editing makes The Grand Babylon Hotel even grander, adding layers of historical, culinary, linguistic, and geographical detail to this fascinating and revelatory fiction. A lucid introduction and magnificent footnotes help to bring Bennett back to life―a resuscitation he surely deserves! This edition is wonderful for teaching―the contextual material is wisely selected and helps to put Bennett into his proper milieu and to bring him―thanks to Saloman’s scholarly vitality and conviction―into ours.”―Elaine Freedgood, New York University

“For too long Arnold Bennett’s posthumous reputation has been overshadowed by his public disagreements with Virginia Woolf: he decried her cleverness, ‘the lowest of artistic qualities’; while she considered him a ‘workman,’ a ‘materialist,’ the representative of an outmoded generation. But the range and vitality of his works give the lie to Woolf’s assessment, and in The Grand Babylon Hotel we encounter a young and ambitious Bennett, a writer exploring the spaces, identities, and anxieties of urban modernity. Through her careful notes, contextual appendices, and illuminating introduction, Randi Saloman welcomes us to the Babylon Hotel, where anonymity and aporia, the ‘community and connection’ of its rooms and corridors, seem to embody the paradoxes of modern life. Much overdue, this new edition will introduce Bennett’s strange and enthralling ‘fantasia’ to a whole new generation of readers.”―Amber Regis, University of Sheffield

“The modern hotel is a locus for all the fluidities, anxieties, and opportunities for self-invention that define modernity itself, as Arnold Bennett recognized in his delightful, genre-confounding novel The Grand Babylon Hotel, a mystery-farce accented by sharp observations on the nature of modern identity. Randi Salomon’s fine edition of the novel situates it equally well in the contexts of Bennett’s career, of Edwardian and modernist literary history, and of the dynamic first years of the turbulent twentieth century. Her illuminating introduction is equally well-attuned to its playful and thoughtful sides, and demonstrates why, even when he is having fun, Arnold Bennett is worth serious reading.” ― Robert Squillace, New York University

“Appendices include Bennett’s views on [Grand Babylon Hotel] from his ‘Journal’ and Letters; quotations relevant to GBH from other writings by Bennett; photographs and images of Bennett; contemporary reviews of GBH; quotations from different histories of the Savoy Hotel including photographs, highly relevant as the Grand Babylon is based on the Savoy as indeed is Bennett’s last completed novel ‘Imperial Palace’ (1930); and details of the ‘lost’ 1916 film of the novel ... With all the extras this edition provides outstanding ‘value added’ and is a significant contribution to the 150th celebration of Bennett’s birth in 2017.” ― Martin Laux, archivist of the Arnold Bennett Society

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