Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Unavailable
    Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Unavailable
    Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Ebook711 pages11 hours

    Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    By Arnold Bennett

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The first novel of a family saga, Clayhanger (1910) is a coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England.  It follows Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business and falls in love. The triumph of the book is the minute detailing of the effect of bourgeois respectability on Edwin’s life and finally his submission to it.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateSep 27, 2011
    ISBN9781411463554
    Unavailable
    Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Author

    Arnold Bennett

    Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English novelist renowned as a prolific writer throughout his entire career. The most financially successful author of his day, he lent his talents to numerous short stories, plays, newspaper articles, novels, and a daily journal totaling more than one million words.

    Read more from Arnold Bennett

    Related to Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Notes From The Isles

      Aug 18, 2023

      My brother-in-law, David, a widower for three years, was still at school when my parents-in-law bought this dear old farmhouse in 1952, and he shares my love of the Highlands despite living in England and having spent a nomadic life as a diplomat. Re

      4 min read

    • Article

      Good Hill Hunting

      Aug 20, 2020

      Good Hill Hunting
      8 min read

    • Article

      Saving The Library

      Oct 22, 2019

      To those inveterate ‘do it now’ obsessives Ken and Ray Walsh, tomorrow means today. And today doesn’t end until whatever part of a restoration they’re working on is finished. Back in May, with no serious project a prospect, the brothers were agitated

      9 min read

    • Article

      Waking A Sleeping GIANT

      Sep 21, 2023

      Waking A Sleeping GIANT
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Stories Of Us

      Nov 24, 2023

      The Stories Of Us
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Big Chill

      Nov 22, 2023

      The Big Chill
      5 min read

    • Article

      Wild In The Wye

      Aug 5, 2021

      Wild In The Wye
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Devil Is In The Detail

      Nov 22, 2023

      The Devil Is In The Detail
      6 min read

    • Article

      The High And Low Roads

      Apr 24, 2022

      The High And Low Roads
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘So Noble And So Bare’

      Jul 13, 2022

      ‘So Noble And So Bare’
      5 min read

    • Article

      Through The Eyes Of Iris

      Feb 17, 2020

      Through The Eyes Of Iris
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Feb 1, 2024

      After a violent response to a blog urging fellow yachtsmen to follow COVID guidelines, Nick Ardley wondered whether he’d ever seek publication again. Then he had his #MeToo moment and decided that victims of bullying should not be silenced. He also w

      1 min read

    • Article

      Town & Country Notebook

      Feb 14, 2024

      1) What would one measure using a pluviometer? 2) Which English Prime Minister had the first names William Ewart? 3) What institution is known as the ‘old lady of Threadneedle Street’? 4) ‘Fill-dike’ is a rural name for which month? 5) What are Rum,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Coleridge Comes Home

      Oct 19, 2022

      On 21st October, a statue of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) will be unveiled, 250 years to the day since his birth in 1772. It will stand in the local church in his small, thriving home town: Ottery St Mary, tucked away in a pocket of countrysid

      3 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      Putting Man On The Map

      Mar 29, 2023

      Putting Man On The Map
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Eleanor CROSSES

      Jan 31, 2020

      The Eleanor CROSSES
      3 min read

    • Article

      MESSAGE In A BOTTLE

      Mar 1, 2023

      FOR HUNDREDS OF years scores of Boston-bound ships have foundered on the rocky ledges that lurk just beneath the waves all along the coast of Massachusetts Bay. The wreck of the brig St. John must surely be the most tragic of all. She was a “famine s

      6 min read

    • Article

      MESSAGE In A BOTTLE

      Mar 1, 2023

      FOR HUNDREDS OF years scores of Boston-bound ships have foundered on the rocky ledges that lurk just beneath the waves all along the coast of Massachusetts Bay. The wreck of the brig St. John must surely be the most tragic of all. She was a “famine s

      6 min read

    • Article

      You Can Go Home Again

      Apr 17, 2023

      You Can Go Home Again
      9 min read

    • Article

      Race Against Time

      Dec 7, 2021

      Race Against Time
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Frozen Frontier

      Aug 13, 2019

      The Frozen Frontier
      14 min read

    • Article

      Notes From The Isles

      Dec 16, 2022

      Notes From The Isles
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Simpson Learns A Lesson

      Jul 29, 2021

      Mrs Simpson Learns A Lesson
      4 min read

    • Article

      Snowshill Manor

      Feb 1, 2024

      Snowshill Manor
      5 min read

    • Article

      I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls

      Sep 15, 2021

      THIS is a deft and stylish exploration of a vast and complex topic. The author, a former Architectural Editor and Editor of COUNTRY LIFE, has visited hundreds of country houses, investigating and understanding their stories, and this naturally inform

      5 min read

    Reviews for Clayhanger (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    4/5

    52 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A thoroughly good read. I've enjoyed Bennett in the past and this one lived up to expectations. I don't feel it has as good a structure as "Anna of the Five Towns" but I felt very much part of the world of the Five Towns again. As a study of the sociology of the rising middle-class it was superb and gave a real feel for the pressures of Methodist religion and social expectation against glimpses of a newer more liberal world.
    • 4/5
      I think that Arnold Bennett has been most unfairly overlooked by history. This is a fine, "coming of age" novel, set in the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign in the "five Towns" of Staffordshire, which would gradually merge into the present-day city of Stoke On Trent. (Of course, in real life there were six towns, but Bennett chose not to have a cognate for Fenton, "the forgotten town".)The central theme of the novel is the development from recently-released schoolboy Edwin Clayhanger, who temporarily dreams of becoming an architect) into an eminent local businessman and free thinker.His father, Darius, has laboured long and hard to create a successful business, on the back of which Edwin and his sisters are born into relative affluence. However, unknown to them, their father had a deep dread of poverty after having worked long shifts in the pottery works as a very young boy, and even spending one night with his parents in the workhouse, whence they were rescued by the good offices of Sunday School teacher Mr Shushions, simply because he had spotted potential in the young Darius and his early eagerness to learn to read.On the day on which Darius attends the funeral of his old patron he suffer a stroke-like episode and sinks into a protracted mental and physical deterioration.Meanwhile Edwin takes control of the business which he runs without Darius's all-pervading ruthlessness, giving way, instead, to his Liberal leanings in the matter of fair wages and working conditions for his staff.However, Edwin's life is not one of unsullied success. Early in life he falls headlong in love with Hilda Lessways, but is sundered from her before they can marry. Memories of Hilda stay with him all his life, and her gentle yet assured radical ideology steers Edwin's own mental, cultural and political development.This all sounds very dry, but the novel is actually wholly engaging. Bennett writes with a deft, light touch, and offers a scintillating insight into the later Victorian period from the perspective of a swelling industrial provincial town.I was also intrigued, in a novel published in 1910, to see the use of the phrase, "Bugger the lot of you!" That must have seemed very risque at the time.I had owned a copy of this book for years but, for reasons I can't adequately disinter, had been reluctant to pick it up and read it. That was definitely a mistake - I rather feel I have now been bitten by the Bennett bug!
    • 5/5
      For much of the 20th Century, Bennett's work was tainted by the perception of being old-fashioned and too traditional, written at the end of an era and looking backward rather than forward (cf. Virginia Woolf); it was not until the 1990s that a more positive view of his work became widely accepted. The noted English critic John Carey was a major influence on his rehabilitation. He praises him in his 1992 book, The Intellectuals and the Masses, declaring Bennett to be his "hero" because his writings "represent a systematic dismemberment of the intellectuals' case against the masses" (p. 152).