Curtain.
The Gresham Press
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
WOKING AND LONDON
[ARNOLD BENNETT]
"It is the style which sets the seal of distinction on Mr. Bennett's work, and he has not written for the moment but for posterity."—Morning Post.
"Mr. Bennett writes novels as Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, Thackeray wrote them—out of the abundance of his imagination, out of an inordinate eagerness to produce human life in all its profusion."—Daily News.
"The man is immense. In point of sheer observation, revelation of character, fictional interpretation, and, above all, in the objective attitude towards his art, Mr. Bennett stands on this work supreme in English literature. His technique is consummate. His detail and paring work, his dramatic sense, his subtlety, his penetration—these things fill one with wonder."—English Review.
"Mr. Bennett is an astonishingly clever and judicious artist, he has that sense of life without which no man can be a novelist; he has humour, and humour's twin brother, pathos; he has all this and much else as well; but the dominant characteristic of his mind is its amazing versatility."—Truth.
"Mr. Bennett has the Trollopian gift of engaging our sympathy with thoroughly ordinary, commonplace, undistinguished, third-rate people, and investing them with qualities which excite curiosity and even fascination. He has qualities which place him in the forefront of living novelists."—Spectator.
"All of us who treasure our Balzac will be grateful for the literary corner Mr. Bennett is making for himself in English middle-class life."—Sketch.
"When we read Bennett, apart from the mere acute interest created by the story he has to tell, we are at once humbled and exalted by the revelation he forces upon us—humbled by the mystery and miracle of human existence, exalted by the heavenly gift of vision which lifts us beyond human despairs. Like Edwin, at the close of 'Clayhanger,' we find ourselves 'braced to the exquisite burden of life.' And that is the supreme achievement of literature."—Glasgow Herald.