More significant, these articles still represent one of the highest achievements of modern literary journalism. In 1931, as he lay dying of typhoid caught while vacationing in France, straw was spread in the streets around Chiltern Court to deaden the noise of traffic, a custom previously reserved for royalty. Nevertheless, university curricula today seldom include his masterpieces in the novel, although his writings remain popular according to library circulation reports.
His short stories are even less taught; 104 of them are available in seven volumes, the last published seven months after his death. He placed writing novels highest in his literary endeavors, but developing short stories obviously interested him as well. Although his earliest attempts at professional writing were journalistic pieces for a hometown newspaper and although he won a prize for his first London publication--a parody of the sensational serial What's Bred in the Bone, by the popular novelist Grant Allen--Bennett's first successful attempt to write creatively was the short story "A Letter Home," published by the avant-garde periodical Yellow Book in July 1895. In the following year he felt capable of quitting his job as a law clerk to accept an assistant editorship of a five-year-old penny paper, Woman.
This is a free page. This page contains 198 words. This
biography contains 7,378 words (approx. 25 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our (Enoch) Arnold Bennett Access Pass.
