Hilda Lessways: 2 (Clayhanger). Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Hilda Lessways: 2 (Clayhanger)

In the second volume of the trilogy, events in ‘Clayhanger’ are retold from the perspective of Hilda Lessways, who is embarking upon a relationship with George Cannon, a charismatic entrepreneur, whose success has taken him from the Five Towns to Brighton. A disastrous bigamous marriage and pregnancy result. Finally, however, she is reconciled with Edwin Clayhanger and one of Bennett’s most living heroines must face up to her conflicting emotions, and the reality of her hopes and tragedies.

Enoch Arnold Bennett, the son of a solicitor, was born in Hanley, Staffordshire. At twenty-one, he moved to London, initially to work as a solicitor's clerk, but he soon turned to writing popular serial fiction and editing a women's magazine. After the publication of his first novel, A Man From the North in 1898, he became a professional writer. He moved to Paris and became a man of cosmopolitan and discerning tastes. Bennett's great reputation is built upon the success of his novels and short stories set in the Potteries, an area of north Staffordshire that he recreated as the 'Five Towns'. Anna of the Five Towns and The Old Wives' Tale show the influence of Flaubert, Maupassant and Balzac as Bennett describes provincial life in great detail. Arnold Bennett is an important link between the English novel and European realism. He wrote several plays and lighter works such as The Grand Babylon Hotel and The Card.