{"title":"Five Towns","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"anna-of-the-five-towns-book-arnold-bennett-9780755115853","title":"Anna Of The Five Towns","description":"Anna, a reserved and subtle woman of great integrity, lives with her overbearing and miserly father. Wooed for her money by the darkly handsome Henry Mynors, Anna courageously defies her father's wrathful indignation. But the complex passions aroused lead to tragedy and heartache. Set in the Potteries against a background of dour Wesleyan Methodism, Anna of the Five Towns is a brilliantly perceptive novel of provincial life in Victorian England.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516885573905,"sku":"GOR004137949","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0755115856.jpg?v=1751394964"},{"product_id":"old-wive-s-tale-book-arnold-bennett-9780755115976","title":"The Old Wive's Tale","description":"Arnold Bennett's masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale chronicles the lives of sisters Constance and Sophia Baines, daughters of a Bursley draper. Constance, a conventional and sombre young woman, marries the shop's chief assistant, while the spirited and adventurous Sophia elopes to Paris with Gerald Scales, an irresistible but unprincipled cad. This is the utterly compelling story of their lives and loves, their triumphs and despair from early teens to old age, told with Arnold Bennett's characteristic insight and truthfulness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516886622481,"sku":"GOR004879916","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/075511597X.jpg?v=1750849038"},{"product_id":"old-wive-s-tale-book-arnold-bennett-9780755106783","title":"The Old Wive's Tale","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It covers a period of about 70 years from roughly 1840 to 1905, and is set in Burslem and Paris. It is generally regarded as one of Bennett's finest works.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bennett was initially inspired to write the book by a chance encounter in a Parisian restaurant. In the introduction to the book, he says\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e.an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she. Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque--far from it --but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBennett also found inspiration in Maupassant's novel Une Vie. (wikipedia.org)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49649729044753,"sku":"GOR003749547","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0755106784.jpg?v=1751233157"},{"product_id":"man-from-the-north-book-arnold-bennett-9780755115969","title":"A Man From The North","description":"Fleeing a drab and dead-end existence, Richard Larch moves south from Bursley to London, intent on pursuing a career as a writer. He is also looking for companionship and love, but finds his high hopes dashed when life in the capital is fraught with difficulties, and the glittering career proves to be more elusive than anticipated. Melancholic and starkly realistic, 'A Man from the North' was Arnold Bennett's first novel.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49906723193105,"sku":"GOR007349250","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49933264584977,"sku":"GOR004831762","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0755115961.jpg?v=1750744919"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/five-towns-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}