Author of Audiobooks - Arnold Bennett

This is a selection of short stories recounting, with gentle satire and tolerant good humour, the small town provincial life at the end of the nineteenth century, based around the six towns in the county of Staffordshire, England, known as the...

A coming-of-age story about Edwin Clayhanger, who leaves school, has his ambition to become an architect thwarted by his tyrannical father, Darius, and so works in the family printing business. Edwin eventually takes over the business successfully....

The Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into...

In The Feast of St. Friend, a Christmas book, Arnold Bennett shares his views on Christmas as the season of goodwill. As always, Bennett's writing includes some thought-provoking ideas liberally spiced with his wry sense of humour, and as always...

The hero is Mr Priam Farll, a painter of considerable ability. He is, however, extremely shy – so shy that when his valet, Henry Leek, dies suddenly, the doctor believes the dead man to be Priam Farll and the live man the valet. The artist does not...

Bennett asks us to consider our brains as the most wonderful machine, a machine which is the only thing in this world that we can control. As he writes: "I am simply bent on calling your attention to a fact which has perhaps wholly or partially...

"The Roll-Call" is the sequel to the Clayhanger trilogy. This book concerns the young life of Clayhanger's stepson, George. George Edwin Cannon (he quickly dropped the surname Clayhanger), is an architect, in many ways representing the ambitions...

Edward Henry Machin, whose rise from humble beginnings to prosperity was told in 'The Card', leads a comfortable life in the English Midlands 'Five Towns'. Yet when he unexpectedly gains three hundred and forty-one pounds in a speculation on rubber...

Theodore Racksole, a rich American multi-millionaire, buys the Grand Babylon Hotel, a luxurous hotel in London, as a whim - and then finds out there are strange things going on - a German prince is supposed to arrive but never turns up, someone is...

"Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say 'lives,' I do not mean exists, nor 'muddles through.'" -- Arnold Bennett knew a "rat race" when he saw one. Every day, his fellow white-collar Londoners followed the same old routine. And...

Are you really 'living', or just existing? Do you want to improve yourself or just continue to muddle through? Do you use the time given you each day, or just throw most of it away? These questions Bennett asks each of us and for those who want to...

The ‘Card’ in question is Edward Henry Machin - His mother called him ‘Denry’. This light-hearted story is of his rise from humble beginnings as the son of a washerwoman and sempstress in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in the pottery...

Hilda is saved from destitution by Edwin Clayhanger who marries her. The two, with Hilda's son by her disastrous 'marriage' to George Cannon, are living in Bursley. Edwin does not enjoy an entirely happy marriage with Hilda because of her...

Twenty-two short stories by Arnold Bennett, mainly set in the 'Five Towns', Bennett's name for the pottery manufacturing towns of the English midlands (Summary by Andy Minter)....

Lilian works in a typewriting office owned by Felix Grig, a middle-aged man of means. The office is run by his spinster sister, Miss Grig, who suspects that Felix is more interested in Lilian than perhaps he should be and gives Lilian the sack.Her...

Subtitled 'A Frolic', this light-hearted book follows the fortunes of Henry Shakespeare Knight who, rather to his own surprise, writes a best-selling novel. (Summary by Simon Evers)...

Bennett's essays always provide food for thought and bring a wry smile to the lips. Human nature, it appears, changes little over the ages, and Bennett, as always, stands the test of time, though in the case of some of the essays in this eclectic...

In this light-hearted yet thought-provoking collection of articles, Bennett offers his thoughts on exercising the mind, organising your life, the advantages (and disadvantages) of marriage and other pocket philosophies. The book stands the test of...

The plot centers on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire, England. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. Having escaped her father by...

‘The Pretty Lady’ is considered to be one of Bennett's most revealing and under-rated works. It is the story of a French prostitute, Christine, who has escaped from wartime Ostend, and set herself up in business in London. Though a refugee, she...

Rachel Louise Fleckring works for the elderly Mrs Maldon, and although with the woman for only a short time, she is taken into the heart of the family. She falls in love with one of Mrs Maldon's descendents, but along the way, she has to come to...

'The Regent' is, if not a sequel to 'The Card', then a 'Further Adventures of' the eponymous hero of that novel. Denry Machin is now forty-three and begins to feel that he is getting old, that making money and a happy home life are not enough and...

Mr Prohack, an ordinary official in the Treasury and leading a hum-drum life, suddenly and unexpectedly inherits a large sum of money which, with a lucky investment, he turns into a fortune. This humorous book follows his progress and that of his...

This first of a trilogy of novels is a coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England, following Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business, and falls in love. The books are set in Bennett's usual setting of...

Leonora Stanway is 40 and lives a comfortable middle-class life with her unsympathetic and dull husband, John. Her three daughters are rapidly growing up and away and she regrets that her life has become dull, domesticated and meaningless. Arthur...

The novel opens with Carl Foster, a recently qualified doctor, coming to London to try and make his fortune. He meets a famous tenor, Signor Alresca, who suffers a dreadful injury backstage and Foster tends to him. He thus meets the lead soprano,...

Arnold Bennett describes a method for enjoying literature, and suggests the contents of a comprehensive library. Chapters 1-10 and 14 describe his method for learning to enjoy literature. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 contain detailed lists of the 337...

This book is the second in Bennett’s four books about life in the Five Towns (the real life Potteries in Staffordshire). It tells the story of Hilda before her marriage to Edwin Clayhanger (from the first book). Bennett explores Hilda's ambition to...

Bennett's served in many capacities in the WWI war effort. After a visit to the Western Front he wrote this 1915 collection of essays about his impressions. He declined being awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) at the end of the war. -...

Published in 1917, this is a collection of a novella and seven short stories by one of the cleverest authors of the early twentieth century. ‘In Queen's Quorum (1951), a survey of crime fiction, Ellery Queen listed Bennett's The Loot of Cities among...

Arnold Bennet's masterly novel is a gritty tale about a bookseller whose life and love of a woman are afflicted by miserliness. It is set in London's characterful Clerkenwell district shortly after the First World War. - Summary by Anthony Ogus...

The Grim Smile of the Five Towns (1907) is the second major collection of stories written by Arnold Bennett. (The first is Tales Of The Five Towns, 1905, available at Librivox.).The five towns of the title are the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent in...

Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931) was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as journalism, propaganda and film. In 1911 Bennett paid a financially rewarding visit to the US, which he later...

Thirteen short stories (1924) by a master story teller of the early twentieth century. His writings, fiction and nonfiction, were popular with the public. After contributions to the WWI war effort, he declined the Order of the British Empire (OBE)....