During his 1920s heyday, Arnold Bennett was one of Britain-s most celebrated writers. As the author of The Old Wives- Tale and Clayhanger he was a household name, writing just as much for the common man as London-s literati. His face was plastered over theatre hoardings and the sides of West End omnibuses. His life represents the ultimate rags-to-riches story of a man who -banged on the door of Fortune like a weekly debt collector- as one of his obituaries so vividly put it.
Yet for all his success, few were aware how cursed Bennett felt by his life-long stutter and other debilitating character traits. In the years running up to his death in 1931, his affairs were close to collapse as he fought a losing battle on three fronts: with his estranged wife; with his disenchanted mistress; and from a literary perspective with Virginia Woolf.
As the first full length biography of Bennett since 1974, the work draws on a wealth of unpublished diaries and letters
