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 First edition | |
| Author | Arnold Bennett |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1902 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 360pp |
| OCLC | 7016739 |
Anna of the Five Towns is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1902 and one of his best-known works. [1]
The plot centres on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire, England. Her activities are strictly controlled by the Methodist church. The novel tells of Anna's struggle for freedom and independence against her father's restraints.
In reality, Stoke-on-Trent is an amalgamation (in 1910) of six towns: in order from northwest to southeast, the towns are Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. "The Five Towns" is a name given to it in novels by Arnold Bennett, who was born in Hanley and lived in the district. He said that he believed "Five Towns" was more euphonious than "Six Towns", so he omitted Fenton (sometimes referred to as "the forgotten town"). He called Stoke "Knype" but used recognisable aliases for the other four towns.
Anna lives with her young step-sister, Agnes, and her twice-widowed father, Ephraim Tellwright, in Bursley. Once an active preacher and teacher in the Methodist movement, her father has become a domestic tyrant and, through his miserly attitude to money, a fairly wealthy man.
On her 21st birthday, Tellwright unceremoniously hands over to Anna an unexpected inheritance from her grandmother: several parcels of shares along with rented residential and industrial property that he has carefully hoarded and re-invested over the years. Anna is now a rich woman but she has no experience in business and financial dealings, save the management of the household expenses her father reluctantly hands her every week.
She visits the rundown ‘building’ (earthenware manufactory) operated by Titus and Willie Price, which she now owns. The Prices’ business is grossly in debt and they claim to be unable to pay the arrears, but manage to give Anna ten pounds. She is also invited to visit the up-to-date and prosperous works of Henry Mynors and is advised by her father to invest in this as a sleeping partner. She is well aware that Mynors, whom she knows through shared church activities, is in love with her but is unsure of her own feelings.
Anna is invited to visit the Isle of Man by Alderman and Mrs Sutton, who see Anna as a suitable friend for their over-indulged daughter, Beatrice. Mynors is also invited. By the end of the visit, Anna and Henry are engaged to be married, but Anna still harbours secret feelings for Willie Price, who she also knows well from the Methodist movement.
On her return to Bursley, Anna is devastated to learn of the suicide of Titus Price. She blames herself and her father’s squeezing of the Prices’ business but Willie comes to call and explains that the crash of a major customer was the catalyst for his father’s suicide.
It becomes clear that Willie must declare himself bankrupt and the creditors (which include Anna) allow him enough money to emigrate to Australia. Mynors takes the large Price family residence for the marital home, even though it will need much refurbishment. He and Anna agree to marry as soon as possible and make a home for Agnes as well.
Henry discovers a discrepancy in the church accounts and it comes to light that the Prices have been embezzling money in order to prop up their business. Anna and Henry determine to jointly make up the discrepancy so that the Prices will not be blamed. However, the news leaks out and the whole community is soon abuzz.
Anna decides that Willie should not leave Bursley empty-handed and slips a note to him, on condition that he will not read it until he arrives in Melbourne. The note contains a money order (in the book, a 'bank-note') for one hundred pounds.
Anna and Henry marry. No more is heard of Willie Price; the story hints that he too commits suicide.
The novel was adapted for the BBC Home Service's Saturday Night Theatre by Olivia Manning in February 1962. In 1985 BBC2 broadcast a four-part serialisation of Anna of the Five Towns , starring Lynsey Beauchamp and Peter Davison and adapted by John Harvey. In 2017, to mark Arnold Bennett's 150th birthday, a stage version of Anna by Deborah McAndrew was put on at the New Vic Theatre in Stoke.
In 2011, Helen Edmundson wrote an adaptation of Anna of the Five Towns which was broadcast in two parts on BBC Radio 4. [2]
Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays, and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
The Keys of the Kingdom is a 1941 novel by A. J. Cronin. Spanning six decades, it tells the story of Father Francis Chisholm, an unconventional Scottish Catholic priest who struggles to establish a mission in China. Beset by tragedy in his youth, as a missionary Chisholm endures many years of hardship, punctuated by famine, plague and war in the Chinese province to which he is assigned. Through a life guided by compassion and tolerance, Chisholm earns the respect of the Chinese—and of fellow clergy who would mistrust him—with his kindly, high-minded and courageous ways.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city and unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of 36 square miles (93 km2). In 2022, the city had an estimated population of 259,965. It is the largest settlement in Staffordshire and is surrounded by the towns of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Alsager, Kidsgrove and Biddulph, which form a conurbation around the city.
Hanley is one of the six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Fenton, Tunstall and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. The town is the main business, commercial and cultural hub of the wider Potteries area.
A miser is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. Although the word is sometimes used loosely to characterise anyone who is mean with their money, if such behaviour is not accompanied by taking delight in what is saved, it is not properly miserly.
Fenton is one of the six towns that amalgamated with Hanley, Tunstall, Burslem, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent to form the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910, later raised to city status in 1925. Fenton is often referred to as "the Forgotten Town", because it was omitted by local author, Arnold Bennett, from many of his works based in the area, including one of his most famous novels, Anna of the Five Towns.
The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. North Staffordshire became a centre of ceramic production in the early 17th century, due to the local availability of clay, salt, lead and coal.
The Card is a comic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911. It was later made into a 1952 movie, starring Alec Guinness and Petula Clark.
Burslem is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent. The population of the town was included under the Burslem Central ward and had a population of 6,490 in the 2021 Census.
Longton is one of the six towns which amalgamated to form the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910, along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Burslem and Stoke-upon-Trent in Staffordshire, England.
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.
The New Vic Theatre is a purpose-built theatre in the round in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. The theatre opened in 1986, replacing a converted cinema, the Victoria Theatre in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.
The Clayhanger Family is a series of novels by Arnold Bennett, published between 1910 and 1918. Though the series is commonly referred to as a "trilogy", and the first three novels were published in a single volume, as The Clayhanger Family, in 1925, there are actually four books. All four are set in the "Five Towns", Bennett's thinly disguised version of the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries.
The Card is a musical with a book by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall and music and lyrics by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent.
Love's Abiding Joy is a 2006 made-for-television Christian drama film based on a series of books by Janette Oke. It was directed by Michael Landon Jr. and stars Erin Cottrell and Logan Bartholomew. It is the fourth movie in the Love Saga, which includes Love Comes Softly (2003), Love's Enduring Promise (2004), Love's Long Journey (2005), Love's Abiding Joy (2006), Love's Unending Legacy (2007), Love's Unfolding Dream (2007), Love Takes Wing (2009), and Love Finds a Home (2009), as well as the 2011 prequels, Love Begins and Love's Everlasting Courage.
The Keys of the Kingdom is a 1944 American film based on the 1941 novel The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin. The film was adapted by Nunnally Johnson, directed by John M. Stahl, and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It stars Gregory Peck, Thomas Mitchell, and Vincent Price, and tells the story of the trials and tribulations of a Roman Catholic priest who goes to China to evangelise.
The Card is a 1952 British comedy film version of the 1911 novel by Arnold Bennett. In America, the film was titled The Promoter. It was adapted by Eric Ambler and directed by Ronald Neame. It stars Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, and Petula Clark. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound.
The federation of Stoke-on-Trent was the 1910 amalgamation of the six Staffordshire Potteries towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Fenton and Longton into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. The federation was one of the largest mergers of local authorities, involving the greatest number of previously separate urban authorities, to take place in England between the nineteenth century and the 1960s. The 1910 federation was the culmination of a process of urban growth and municipal change that started in the early 19th century.
The Furys Chronicle is a sequence of five novels, published between 1935 and 1958, by James Hanley (1897–1985). The main setting is the fictional, northern, English town of Gelton, which is based on Liverpool, where Hanley was born, and involves an Irish Catholic family of seafarers, similar to Hanley's own. The action takes place between 1911 and 1927. The first novel in the series, The Furys, was Hanley's sixth novel.
Anna of the Five Towns is a 1985 British television drama series which first aired on BBC 2. It is an adaptation by John Harvey of the 1902 novel of the same title by Arnold Bennett.
Anna of the Five Towns public domain audiobook at LibriVox