[Gutenberg 21249] • Clayhanger

• Three of British author Arnold Bennett's bestsellers are bound together in this Kindle book: The Grand Babylon Hotel, Leonora & Clayhanger

The Grand Babylon Hotel

American millionaire Theodore Racksole and his daughter are staying at the exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel when Nella orders a steak and beer. Her request is refused, so her father buys the entire hotel to give her what she desires. Stranger things are happening in the hotel, however... including the disappearance of Miss Spencer, the pretty, hotel clerk.

Leonora

A privileged and beautiful mother of adult children battles life more than a century ago in Stoke-on-Trent in England, and tries to come to terms with her regrets, her selfish husband, and life in a Potteries town in the late nineteenth century.

Clayhanger

The first in a series of four novels involving a coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England, and following Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business and falls in love.

About the Author

“My mother is far too clever to understand anything she doesn't like.” – Arnold Bennett

Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 –1931) was an English novelist who also wrote non-fiction books and worked in journalism, propaganda and film.

Bennett had a modest upbringing. His father, Trent. Enoch Bennett, was a solicitor and the two tried to work together unsuccessfully, perhaps triggering his novels’ recurrent theme of parental miserliness.

Bennett won a literary competition in a magazine in 1889 and took up writing and journalism full-time from then on, publishing dozens of books.

While Bennett butted heads with the Bloomsbury set including Virginia Woolf, English critic John Carey praised Bennett in his 1992 book, The Intellectuals and the Masses, saying Bennett’s books "represent a systematic dismemberment of the intellectuals' case against the masses".

His best-known and admired books include The Old Wives Tale, Anna of the Five Towns, The Grand Babylon Hotel and the trilogy Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways and These Twain.