Editions

Clayhanger

Clayhanger

No longer a boy, not quite a man, Edwin Clayhanger stands on a canal bridge on his last day of school, and surveys the valley of Bursley and the Five Towns. Serious, good-natured and full of incoherent ambition, Edwin's hopes and dreams for the future are just taking shape, even as they are put to the test by challenges from Edwin's domineering father, the stifling constraints of society, and an unusual young woman.

Reviews

  • Crammed with details of Victorian life, the first book in Bennett's trilogy about a Potteries family examines how one man, Edwin Clayhanger, is shaped by class, geography and ties of blood.

    Guardian

  • Arnold Bennett writes marvelously on the stuff of life

    New York Times

  • For Bennett...compassion is not soggy. It involves understanding. The core of his writing is psychological truth, clinically observed, crisply reported

    Sunday Times

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About the Author

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was one of the most versatile, ambitious and successful British novelists of the early 20th century. His novels and short stories both celebrate and deplore a rapidly changing Britain. Much of his greatest work is set where he grew up, in the Potteries of the West Midlands. Inspired by Zola and Maupassant, he realized that this world of brutal industrial work and rapid social change, religious severity and material temptation, was the perfect backdrop for everything from comedy to tragedy. He died of typhoid.

Arnold Bennett

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