Description:This book cover design was produced in watercolour, perhaps by Arnold Bennett's friend E.McKnight Kauffer, who decorated his home at Chiltern Court, Marylebone.
It was created for The Matador of the Five Towns, and features a yard scene from a pottery factory, with bottle ovens, potbank buildings and working people - part of the distinctive Potteries landscape that so shaped Bennett's best-known fiction.
Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931)
Arnold Bennett was born at 90 (now 92) Hope Street Hanley.
Educated at Burslem and Newcastle-Under-Lyme he left his home and went to London where he became a full-time author and journalist.
His literary output was prodigious. It comprised not only novels and short stories but also essays, reviews, play and film.
Achieving considerable critical and financial success he became a national figure.
Much of Bennett's best work is set in the 'Five Towns' a thinly disguised depiction of the Stoke-on-Trent area as it was in his youth.
His ashes are buried in Burslem Cemetery.
Special thanks to the Arnold Bennett Society for their help in researching this image.