> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 18 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784872366
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

Anna of the Five Towns




A young woman used to life under the strict rule of her tyrannical father finds herself on the brink of a new existence

Miserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. His daughter, Anna, is used to the life of strict, thrifty order imposed by her father. But when she comes of age, Anna inherits a small fortune and attracts the attentions of the town's most eligible bachelor. A new world seems to be opening to Anna, but her heart, given a taste of freedom, leads her in unexpected directions.

  • Published: 18 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784872366
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett was born in Hanley, Staffordshire, in 1867. After a secondary school education, he worked first for his father, a self-taught solicitor, and then moved to London as a shorthand clerk with a firm of solicitors. He began to write to make extra money and in 1893 became assistant editor and subsequently editor of the weekly magazine, Woman, reviewing books and writing articles on general subjects, something he continued to do all his life. His first novel, A Man From the North, appeared in 1898 and in 1900 he finished The Grand Babylon Hotel, published in 1902, and began Anna of the Five Towns (1902), in which he first started to use the Potteries of his boyhood as a setting for his novels. In these contrasting works, he also reveals his lifelong fascination for, on the one hand, the world's luxury and opulence, and on the other, puritanism and people who can endure hard work.

In 1903 Bennett moved to Paris and in 1907 he married a Frenchwoman (from whom he separated in 1921). The Old Wives' Tale (1908) was written in France and shows Bennet's main influences, the first being that of his own background and the second that of the French realists such as Flaubert, Maupassant and Balzac. In it, Bennett also reveals his own preoccupations with the effects of time and history on the lives of ordinary people.

This was followed by the Clayhanger trilogy: Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911) and These Twain (1916). His works also include several plays, two volumes of short stories and several other novels. He died in 1931.

Also by Arnold Bennett

See all

Praise for Anna of the Five Towns

Arnold Bennett is very much worth reading. This will be contrary to what any of you who might have studied English Literature at university since the last war will have been told, so please park such prejudices.

Daily Telegraph

Bennett's great novels all deal with the great emotions, though they are revealed through the stories of 'ordinary' people

Independent on Sunday

A writer of genius

Guardian

Bennett has long been one of my favourite writers

Peter James