The Matador of the Five Towns

The Five Towns #9

by Arnold Bennett

'The Matador of the Five Towns' is a collection of stories, both tragic and comic, set in and around fictional versions of five of the towns that make up 'the Potteries' (Stoke-on-Trent.)

Genres: Short Stories, British Literature, Classics

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk at the age of 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine before becoming a full-time author in 1900. Always a devotee of French culture in general and French literature in particular, he moved to Paris in 1903; there the relaxed milieu helped him overcome his intense shyness, particularly with women. He spent ten years in France, marrying a Frenchwoman in 1907. In 1912 he moved back to England. He and his wife separated in 1921, and he spent the last years of his life with a new partner, an English actress. He died in 1931 of typhoid fever, having unwisely drunk tap-water in France.
Many of Bennett's novels and short stories are set in a fictionalised version of the Staffordshire Potteries, which he called The Five Towns. He strongly believed that literature should be accessible to ordinary people and he deplored literary cliques and élites. His books appealed to a wide public and sold in large numbers. For this reason, and for his adherence to realism, writers and supporters of the modernist school, notably Virginia Woolf, belittled him, and his fiction became neglected after his death. During his lifetime his journalistic "self-help" books sold in substantial numbers, and he was also a playwright; he did less well in the theatre than with novels but achieved two considerable successes with Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913).
Studies by Margaret Drabble (1974), John Carey (1992), and others have led to a re-evaluation of Bennett's work. The finest of his novels, including Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910) and Riceyman Steps (1923), are now widely recognised as major works.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories consists of twenty-two short stories written by Arnold Bennett, their primary setting being the pottery manufacturing towns of the English Midlands.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

As everyone knows there is no greater accomplishment in reading than reading collections of short stories. With novels you can let your mind go wandering and you do not loose much. With a short story, you have to pay attention all the time or you are missing the point. And, of course, not many short stories deserve the attention. I will read story collections with pleasure only be a hand-full of writers. Maugham, Tubb, Asimov, Trollope. And Bennett.

This book was published in 1912 and contains tragic as well as "frollic" stories, 5 and 17 respectively. And I would say that nearly 20 of them are good to very good. The title story probably being the best. If for nothing else than for being about the life of a football player reaching the end of his career. Once he was worth 500 Pounds now only 200 being 34. Still, the one who draws the crowds. The description of a game is hilarious. Very funny. It could be just the same today, except for the fact that today's heroes do not have to expect poverty. A tragic story. Mother of his children dies giving birth. A truly great story.

The Blue Suit. A story is told about a man and a woman and naturally the guy being told the story wants to know what becomes of them. And is being told: "Did you expect them to fall in love with each other on the spot and be engaged? What a sentimental old fool you are, after all!"

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of short stories, some better than others but all inoffensive. Bennett is very good with his characters and his settings, which allows us to instantly pick up a short story with a belief in the characters and their actions, and to be in amongst his beloved Five Towns. It also means we don't waste time being jarred out of the story. Some are very interesting just for describing the social conditions at the time, others are amusing situations or snippets of a life. Well worth reading, though I would always recommend novels first, short stories later.

[Ruba Al thunayan]

Short and wired stories in five towns , Amazing book .

[Griselda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The shorter tales are strongly reminiscent of Guy de Maupassant's Contes and are forerunners of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.