I was hoping the Classic Spin would land on one of the shorter books in my list. Arnold Bennett isn’t known for his brevity but fortunately Anna of the Five Towns is one of his shorter novels.
The novel was first published in 1902, the first of a series set in the Staffordshire Potteries region of Northern England where he was born. Bennett gave his towns fictional names but they are apparently easily recognisable to people who live in that region today (now known as Stoke-on-Trent).
During Bennett’s childhood the area was the largest producer of ceramics in Britain with hundreds of companies manufacturing a range of ceramics from the basic earthenware and porcelain to the more refined bone china and jasperware.
Bennett used this setting to explore social and economic issues such as the effect on individuals of industrial boom and bust. In Anna of the Five Towns, his focus is on Anna Tellwright, who fights for freedom and independence against the strictures of the Methodist church and her dictatorial father. At the start of the novel she is presented very much as a model of the Victorian woman, dutiful and diligent in undertaking her responsibilities as mistress of the household. An unexpected inheritance gives her the opportunity to strike out from hearth and home and into the world of business.
I know from reading one of the later Five Towns novels (The Old Wives’Tale) that Bennett can be verbose, a trait which brought some scathing remarks from Virginia Woolf. But the detail does create authenticity and once I got used to it, I appreciated the depth of his world building. I’m hoping I’ll enjoy Anna of the Five Towns much as my earlier experience of his writing. I wish I could get reading straight away but Bennett is going to have to wait until end of March since I’ll be fully immersed in the Wales Reading Month until then.
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