The English novelist and dramatist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was the author of The Old Wives' Tale, a masterpiece of realism.

Arnold Bennett was born on May 27, 1867, in Hanley, one of the pottery-making "Six Towns" of central England. The youth, called Enoch, spoke with a stammer and was determined to make his living in literature. After attending local schools and working in his father's law office, he moved to London in 1888 to become a writer. In 1893 he was employed by the magazine Woman, and in 1898 he published his first novel, A Man from the North. During these years he began to call himself Arnold Bennett. In 1902 Bennett published two novel, Anna of the Five Towns and The Grand Babylon Hotel--the first realistic, the second sensational. They represent the pattern of his work: fiction of serious artistic purpose produced at the same time as material of no artistic value...