Riceyman Steps is a novel by British novelist Arnold Bennett, first published in 1923 and winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It follows a year in the life of Henry Earlforward, a miserly second-hand bookshop owner in the Clerkenwell area of London. (from wikipedia.org)

Riceyman Steps

S'il se contentait de nous narrer la destinée heureuse-malheureuse, tragique et commune d'Anna Tellwright, ce roman aurait déjà la valeur d'un document à la fois historique, sociologique et psychologique exceptionnel. D'une dureté impitoyable sous les apparences de la charité religieuse et de la respectabilité, une société puritaine s'organise autour de l'accumulation des richesses, avec son cortège de perversions et de névroses. Dans ce haut-lieu de la céramique que sont les "Potteries" du Staffordshire, Anna, tyrannisée par un père digne de l'Harpagon de Molière, mène une vie de soumission et de compromis. Les injustices de la condition féminine et les souffrances personnelles ont rarement été perçues et dénoncées avec autant d'acuité. Cette fiction romanesque allie le singulier à l'universel au travers de personnages vrais parce que faux, ambivalents, contradictoires.

Anna, malgré tout

Avec Le Spectre, Terre de Brume propose, dans une traduction révisée, un des textes les plus originaux d'Arnold Benne", grand homme oublié des lettres edwardiennes. Roman théâtral louchant sur Le Fantôme de l'Opéra dont il transcende les codes -, conte fantastique, allégorie métaphysique, roman d'initiation... Le Spectre est tout cela. Aimée comme il se doit de plusieurs hommes (dont Carl Forster, le jeune narrateur du Spectre), la soprano Rosa Rosetta, étoile internationale de l'opéra, semble être surveillée par une présence spectrale d'une impitoyable et meurtrière jalousie. Maladie, morts subites, disparitions s'accumulent autour de la jeune femme, jusqu'au jour où l'ombre qui la suit affronte, en un terrifiant duel mental, l'homme qui lui est resté fidèle. Bennett jongle avec les conventions romanesques et les profondeurs tragiques; son roman surnaturel est aussi le portrait charmeur d'une société où l'apparence et le spectacle, déjà, sont rois. Le Spectre ne lésine jamais sur la noblesse des décors et des sentiments. Ses capitales européennes sont celles, élégantes, dorées et mystérieuses, d'une fin de siècle vivace autant que décadente. Le Spectre, pourtant, n'est pas qu'une fantaisie, et dresse le portrait presque unique en littérature d'un spectre conscient de sa " spectritude ", et de sa sidérale différence avec le monde des vivants. Il fallait peut-être un écrivain dit réaliste pour donner aussi paradoxalement chair à un fantôme...

Le Spectre

This   carefully crafted ebook: "Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card   (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett)" is formatted for your eReader with a   functional and detailed table of contents. 
The hero of the novel Buried Alive, Mr Priam Farll, is a painter of considerable ability. He is, however,   extremely shy - so shy that when his valet, Henry Leek, dies suddenly, the   doctor believes the dead man to be Priam Farll and the live man the valet...
The Old Wives Tale is a novel set in part in the Potteries district of   North Staffordshire, where Bennett grew up, and is generally considered his masterpiece.
The Card is a short comic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911. It   chronicles the rise of Edward Henry ("Denry") Machin from a washerwoman's son to Mayor of Bursley (a fictitious town based on Burslem).
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English journalist, novelist, and writer.   After working as a rent collector and solicitor's clerk, Bennett won a   writing contest which convinced him to become a journalist and an author.

Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett)

This   carefully crafted ebook: "Lilian (Unabridged)" is formatted for   your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
Content :
A beautiful young girl, was a typist, though not a contented typist. She yearned after a high, impossible ideal, which involved all the more vulgar   luxuries so easily obtainable in exchange for cash.
The typewriting office at which she was employed had been started by Felix   Grig, a middle-aged man of means, as a hobby for his spinster sister. Miss   Grig suspected that Felix was more interested in Lilian than he ought to be ;   therefore, she gave Lilian the sack. But this ruse was unsuccessful, for   Felix invited Lilian to dine at the expensive restaurant of her dreams and   suggested a little trip to the Continent. Lilian accepted with alacrity and   off they went. Thereafter, chapters celebrating the delights of prosperous   indolence on the Riviera. Unhappily, after a few days of this delicious   existence Felix catches a cold and Lilian discovers that she is going to have   a baby. Felix's cold becomes pneu- monia ; but pneumonia or not, he gets up,   marries Lilian, makes a will leaving her everything, and dies. Lilian, having   assisted at the usual ceremonies, returns to England and lives happily or   unhappily ever afterwards in Felix's town house.
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English journalist, novelist, and writer.   After working as a rent collector and solicitor's clerk, Bennett won a   writing contest which convinced him to become a journalist. He later turned   to the writing of novels, including his most famous Clayhanger and Anna of   the five towns.

Lilian (Unabridged)

This   carefully crafted ebook: "Over There: War Scenes on the Western   Front" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed   table of contents.
This book  was written by British   writer Arnold Bennett. He lived in France from 1903-1911, and was the first   established author to be invited to tour the front for propaganda purposes,   spending three weeks in France and Belgium in June 1915 and publishing this   account later in the year. He was appointed Director of Propaganda in the   Ministry of Information in 1918.
Enoch Arnold Bennett  (1867-1931) was   a British novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist whose major works form   an important link between the English novel and the mainstream of European   realism. He also worked in other fields such as journalism, propaganda and   film.
Table of Content :
1. Chapter 1. The Zone Of Paris
2. Chapter 2. On The French Front
3. Chapter 3. Ruins
4. Chapter 4. At Grips
5. Chapter 5. The British Lines
6. Chapter 6. The Unique City

Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front

Priam Frall, peintre de génie, a choisi d'échapper au fardeau de la gloire. Il se réfugie dans un sombre appartement londonien en compagnie de son majordome.
Un jour, ce dernier meurt inopinément. C'est l'occasion rêvé pour Priam Frall de disparaître à tout jamais... Il revêt les habits du cadavre et endosse son identité.
Le voilà condamné à jouer le rôle d'un homme dont il ne savait rien, à assister à ses propres funérailles, et à supporter un passé qui ne lui appartient pas...

Satire du monde artistique, comédie de moeurs et humour noir, ce roman possède tous les ingrédients qui ont fait de Arnold Bennett un auteur d'exception. 



Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) est un écrivain britannique. D'abord journaliste, son premier livre « L'Homme du Nord » connaît un succès retentissant. Il devient éditeur en chef de son magazine, et rédige lui-même les feuilletons qu'il y propose : ainsi paraît « The Grand Babylon Hotel ». Il décide alors de se consacrer à la littérature. Il s'installe à Paris où il est influencé par Maupassant. Il deviendra connu pour « Enterré vivant ».

Enterré Vivant

"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat-half empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New suit-old hat! Magnificent necktie-baggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass-bad mutton, or Turkish coffee-cracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it! I'd show him-"

So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our superior way.

We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay, "How to live on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live on twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money-usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Henry Earlforward, a shabby Clerkenwell bookseller, has retired from life to devote himself (and his wife Violet) to a consuming passion for money. Miserliness, long disguised as procrastination, can become a fatal illness. Bennett's bleak story is saved, however, by the Earlforwards' maid Elsie: buxom, warm, ignorant, and sublime in her spontaneous greed for life. Riceyman Steps is a modernist masterpiece; a profound psychological and symbolic exploration of the forces of love and death.

Riceyman Steps

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