Word: riceyman
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...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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