Arnold Bennett

Bennett is best known for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in a fictionalised version of the 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 writers and supporters of the modernist school belittled him, and much of his work became neglected after his death.

Enoch Arnold Bennett (always known as Arnold Bennett). In 1905 Bennett became engaged to Eleanor Green, a member of an eccentric and unreliable American family living in Paris, but at the last moment, after the wedding invitations had been sent out, she broke off the engagement and swiftly married a fellow American. Drabble comments that Bennett was well rid of her, but it was a painful episode in his life. In early 1907 he met Marguerite Soulié (1874–1960), who soon became first a friend, then a lover and then a wife.