Arnold Bennett was born at 90 Hope Street in Hanley, one of the six towns that make up Stokeon-Trent, now as then the chief English home for the manufacture of pottery and china. The scene in Bennett's day was dominated by great bottle-shaped brick kilns and by the smoke that issued from them. In 1897, eight years after leaving the district, Bennett made a brief return, and recorded a romantic impression in his journal: "during this week ..., when I have been traversing the district after dark, the grim and original beauty of certain aspects of the Potteries ... has fully revealed itself for the first time." But though Bennett used the six towns (changing them to five) for much of his fiction of the next seventeen years, he rarely alluded to such beauty, and gave negligible attention to the pottery industry. The characteristic emphasis in the novels is that in Clayhanger...