Word: riceyman
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Verbalist Bennett himself in 1929 gave a judgment on his own literary output with which few critics in 1953 would disagree : "I have written between 70 and 80 books. But also I have written only four: The Old Wives' Tale, The Card, Clay-hanger and Riceyman Steps. All the others are made a reproach...
...solicitor's clerk. His first published piece was How a Bill of Costs is Drawn Up; his second appeared in the late great Yellow Book. Says he: ''I write for money." He makes a good income. Some of his books: Clayhanger (pr. "Clanger"), The Old Wives' Tale, Mr. Prohack, Riceyman Steps, The Grand Babylon Hotel, Milestones (a play...
...without his host. The Antichrist of Baltimore snatched it up with zest, and in half as many words as his oppouent proceeded to score almost twice the number of points, of which the following is a fair sample: "You hint that I'd have acclaimed Arnold Bennett's novel "Riceyman Steps', if the author had been an American! I leave this insinuation to a candid world--and you to the mercy...
...Story. The romance of Henry Earlforward, middle-aged bookseller of Riceyman Steps, Clerkenwell, and of Violet Arb, well-to-do widow, past 40 who had recently inherited the confectioner's shop across the way, was an odd but happy linking together of two penny-pinching temperaments. The grand passion of Henry's life was for solid cash ? a passion so strong it attained the proportions of self-sacrificing heroism. When he discovered on the eve of his marriage that Violet had actually been paying their mutual charwoman, Elsie, less than he, he glowed to think what a wonderful wife...
...Significance. In Riceyman Steps, Mr. Bennett successfully re-turns to the rich, discursive, detailed manner of Clayhanger and The Old Wives' Tale. A slighter book than these, it is nevertheless quite as able. The bare outline of the plot necessarily makes the novel sound some-what squalid and overly grim?but it is neither. There is much humor in it, excellent portraiture, great fidelity to life. The years have not diminished Mr. Bennett's extraordinary curiosity about practically everything and person in this transient world...
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