Search results for ""Author Arnold Bennett""

Gran Hotel Babylon es la obra que lanzó a la fama a Arnold Bennet. La novela nunca ha dejado de reeditarse en Inglaterra y fue la que más beneficio económico le reportó en toda su carrera; tuvo un éxito considerabilísimo por su perfecta maquinaria narrativa y su calibrada dosificación de efectos dramáticos. Esta obra es una pieza de entidad notable. Los ambientes, por ejemplo, por los que transitan los personajes de la emocionante intriga (desde el gigantesco hotel de lujo hasta el desolado y complejo ámbito portuario londinense; la bolsa y su mar de complejas transacciones hasta los palacios del juego y la diversión) están descritos con mano maestra, ofreciendo un fresco inigualable de la Inglaterra fin de siglo, no inferior a ciertas novelas de mayor entidad dramática.Un multimillonario estadounidense, junto a su caprichosa pero sagaz hija, Nella, recalan en Londres, en el mejor hotel de la ciudad y por extensión del mundo civilizado, el Gran Hotel Babylon. Por un capricho azaroso, s

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Introduction by Anita Miller. This novel about the divergent lives of two sisters which spans the Victorian and Edwardian periods is a 20th-century classic. Recently included in the list of the greatest 20th-century novels.

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Henry Earlforward, a shabby Clerkenwell bookseller, has retired from life to devote himself (and his wife Violet) to a consuming passion for money. Miserliness becomes a fatal illness and Bennett gives a terrifying description of its ravages. But the book's horrible situation is saved through the character of Elsie - whose life-affirming refusal to engage with the nightmarish world of the bookseller transforms the story.Bennett wished in Riceyman Steps to create an English novel as powerful as anything by Balzac, the writer he most admired, with the same sense of great human issues being played out within the confines of a household. The result is an unforgettable work which is also a gripping description of the harsh, battered London of the period just after the First World War.

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Nella, daughter of millionaire Theodore Racksole, orders a dinner of steak and beer at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel in London. Her order is refused, so Theodore promptly buys the chef, the kitchen and the whole hotel. But when hotel staff begin to vanish and a German prince goes missing, Nella discovers that murder, blackmail and kidnapping are also on the menu. A rollicking murder mystery from one of the finest writers of the last century.

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'Deeply moving, original, and dealing with material that I had never encountered in fiction, but only in life' Margaret DrabbleGrowing up in the world of the 'five towns' of industrial England, with their furnaces and chimneys, huddled red-brown streets, prayer meetings and small-minded bigotry, Anna is dominated by her miserly and tyrannical father. When she inherits a fortune and finds love, she struggles to break free from the constraints upon her, even though she is torn between duty and her deepest feelings. Arnold's novel of parental tyranny and rebellion is a portrayal of a woman of great spirit, complexity and integrity.

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The Grand Babylon Hotel opens with New York millionaire Theodore Racksole's demand for an ""Angel Kiss"" - an American concoction the Grand Babylon does not serve. Racksole and his daughter Nella are on vacation, but quickly find themselves running the hotel, after Theodore's impulsive purchase of the establishment from founder and owner Felix Babylon. Soon the Racksoles are rushing to solve the mystery that threatens the reigning Prince of Posen - and Nella's future. The hotel itself opens possibilities for adventure, discovery, and wonder that the Racksoles had never anticipated.The novel, out of print for decades, raises serious questions about the possibilities for a truly cosmopolitan world, offering a dazzling picture of what this would look like. The historical appendices to this edition include extensive photographs and documents from the history of the Savoy Hotel (the model for the Grand Babylon) and material on the film version.

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Miserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. His daughter, Anna, is used to the life of strict, thrifty order imposed by her father. But when she comes of age, Anna inherits a small fortune and attracts the attentions of the town's most eligible bachelor. A new world seems to be opening to Anna, but her heart, given a taste of freedom, leads her in unexpected directions.

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No longer a boy, not quite a man, Edwin Clayhanger stands on a canal bridge on his last day of school, and surveys the valley of Bursley and the Five Towns. Serious, good-natured and full of incoherent ambition, Edwin's hopes and dreams for the future are just taking shape, even as they are put to the test by challenges from Edwin's domineering father, the stifling constraints of society, and an unusual young woman.

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One of fiction's greatest chancers - the story of Denry Machin and his unceasing, ingenious efforts to become a great manSet in the raw, Victorian world of the 'Five Towns', The Card tells the extremely funny and tangled story of Denry Machin's rise from mediocrity to fame through a series of ludicrous and yet perversely successful schemes. He dances, pleads, cheats and inspires his way through life in a series of set-pieces which wonderfully evoke a now long-gone world of civic balls, seaside excursions, newspaper boys and patent chocolate remedies. As everybody said after one of his most stylish coups, Denry 'was not simply a card; he was the card.'

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First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters--shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia--over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

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"The most consistent of all series in terms of language control, length, and quality of story." David R. Hill, Director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading.

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‘There are few more moving accounts of the effects of time, the passage of history and the slow encroachment of age than this remarkable, epic novel’ Guardian Discover this powerful novel about the ordinary lives of the Baines sisters. The perfect next step for fans of Little Women. In The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett tells the story of two such old wives, sisters Constance and Sophia, from youth, through marriage, heartbreak, triumphs and disasters, to old age. In doing so, he reveals with careful compassion the intense inner lives that throb beneath every seemingly insignificant exterior. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SATHNAM SANGHERA

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