Enoch Arnold Bennett was a multifaceted celebrity in his day--novelist, short-story writer, critic, journalist, playwright, travelogue writer, prodigious letter writer, watercolorist, member of government, yachtsman--with diverse interests and phenomenal productivity. At the height of his popularity, in the 1920s, posters advertising his latest novel were plastered on the sides of the double-decker buses in London. One of his plays, Milestones, written in collaboration with Edward Knoblock, ran in London's West End theater district for six hundred performances in 1912. William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, appointed Bennett deputy minister in the Ministry of Information during World War I. After the Armistice in 1918, Bennett was offered a knighthood but refused to accept it. His book reviews for the Evening Standard ran under the title "Books and Persons" from 1926 to 1931 and were credited by Hugh Walpole and other young writers with making the fortune of a new book in a night. More...