Arnold Bennett began as a journalist and never altogether lost the journalist's fascination for the complicated material processes which keep modern life in motion. It was this interest in externals that inspired Virginia Wolf's famous critical attack on Bennett's art, which she found lacking in feeling for 'mood, or soul, or inwardness', though she still acknowledged him 'by far the best workman' among the Edwardian novelists. Another woman novelist, Margaret Drabble, in her recent biography sees beyond this to depths in his work not visible to some of his contemporaries. Latterly Bennett wrote too much and too quickly, yet it is also that feeling for material detail which gives his best books their richness and authenticity, and in his greatest novel, The Old Wives Tale, it is precisely the subtle introduction of externals which holds the secret of his masterly handling of the themes of ageing and the passage of time.

Kenneth Young examines those of Bennett's writings which have best stood the test of time, notably the novels and stories set in the Staffordshire pottery towns, such as The Old Wives Tale, and the Clayhanger series, and the London novel, Riceyman Steps, and, less well known, his Journals. He finds Bennett not only a novelist of lasting achievement but a literary personality of exceptional vitality.