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3 volumes. First Editions and a complete set of The Clayhanger Family. Vol. I is a publisher's presentation copy. 8vo, each volume in original gray or green cloth, gilt-lettered and decorated on the spines and upper covers. vii, 574, (31 ads); vi, 408, (31); vi, 526, (31) pp. A handsome set in pleasing, lightly aged condition with some fading to the spine of the second volume, and light evidence of use. A FIRST EDITION COLLECTION COMPLETE OF THE CLAYHANGER FAMILY, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS BY ARNOLD BENNETT, BRITISH PLAYWRIGHT, CRITIC, ESSAYIST, AND NOVELIST. 'Bennett 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 totaling 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 in the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. The sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day. Many of Bennett's novels and short stories are set in a fictionalized 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. These "Five Towns" make their first appearance in Bennett's fiction in Anna of the Five Towns (1902) and are the setting for further novels including Leonora (1903), Whom God Hath Joined (1906), The Old Wives' Tale (1908) and the Clayhanger trilogy Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911) and These Twain (1916) as well as for dozens of short stories. Bennett's fiction portrays the Five Towns with what The Oxford Companion to English Literature calls "an ironic but affectionate detachment, describing provincial life and culture in documentary detail, and creating many memorable characters". Darius Clayhanger's early life is based on that of a family friend and Bennett himself is seen in Edwin in Clayhanger.[88] He has been criticised for making literary use in that novel of the distressing details of his father's decline into senility, but in Pound's view, in committing the details to paper Bennett was unburdening himself of painful memories.'These Twain is Bennett's "last extended study of Five Towns life". Wiki. Seller Inventory # 32144
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