The Old Wives' Tale (World's Classics) - Softcover

Bennett, Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192829661 ISBN 13: 9780192829665

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1995

Synopsis

The Old Wives' Tale (1908) celebrates the romance of even the most ordinary lives in the course of tracing the passage of time over three generations. It tells the story of the two Baines sisters, placid stay-at-home Constance and rebellious Sophia, from their girlhood to their last days. They move from the family drapery shop in provincial Bursley during the repressive mid-Victorian period to old age in the modern era of mass marketing and the internal combustion engine. The setting ranges from the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Bursley to a Paris brothel, the action from the controlled domestic routine of the Baines household to wife murder and the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. This edition of The Old Wives' Tale gives fascinating critical insights into Bennett's most wide-ranging novel, considered by many to be his masterpiece. This book is intended for students of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Professor of English Literature at the University of Sydney, Margaret Harris is also the editor of Arnold Bennett'sAnna of the Five Towns, published in World's Classics in January 1995.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192829661
• ISBN 13: 9780192829665
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 674
• Editor: Harris Margaret