Herbert Ernest Bates was born on 16 May 1905 in Rushden, Northhamptonshire, the first of the three children--two sons and a daughter--of Albert Ernest Bates and Lucy Elizabeth Lucas Bates. His father's boot- and shoemaking shop was soon swallowed up by industrialization, forcing the father to spend his later years working in a factory. Bates's dislike of Rushden, a factory town, informed his fiction with a mistrust of industrial "progress."
Bates's resentment of the strict Methodism of his parents eventually led him to reject organized religion. From his grandfather, William Lucas, who left shoemaking to run a small, barely profitable farm, Bates gained a respect for the simple life and for nature. The bucolic descriptions of nature that are one of the strengths of Bates's fiction stem from his childhood memories of traveling the countryside with his grandfather.
Having attended the local school since age four, in 1916 Bates won a free place at the Kettering Grammar School. There he rapidly acquired a distaste for instruction and for the headmaster and came to regard school as little more than a prison. His attitude changed in 1919 when a shell-shocked soldier-turned-teacher sparked his interest in literature. From then on Bates was one of the best students at the school in literature and composition though his marks in the other areas continued to be mediocre.
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