Your United States - Impressions of a First Visit: With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton

by Arnold Bennett, F. J. Harvey Darton

First published in 1912, “Your United States - Impressions of a First Visit” is an interesting account of the author's experiences when visiting the USA for the first in the early twentieth century. Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English writer. Although he is perhaps best remembered for his popular novels, Bennett also produced work in other areas including the theatre, propaganda, journalism, and film. Contents “The First Night”, “Streets”, “The Capitol and Other Sites”, “Some Organizations”, “Transit and Hotels”, “Sports and the Theatre”, “Education and Art”, and “Citizens”. Offering a fascinating insight into American life at the turn of the twentieth century, this vintage book will appeal to those with an interest in American history and society, and it is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Bennet's influential work. Other notable works by this author “Helen with a High Hand” (1910), “The Card” (1911), and “Hilda Lessways” (1911). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with an essay from F. J. Harvey Darton's 1915 book, “Arnold Bennett”.

Genres: Nonfiction

169 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

[Mh430]

In 1911 British novelist Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931) spent "seven weeks (less one day)" touring the United States and this book was the result. It's a fairly short work and occasionally dry reading at times but still packed with fascinating observations on topics ranging from the mail order industry to being a spectator of a Major League Baseball game to the sleeping arrangements on American railroad cars. Did Bennett share the prejudices of his time and social class? Absolutely. He praises certain American authors and artists but while touring Washington DC Bennett admits to being "slightly scared by the prevalence of negroes." And during a visit to a less prestigious New York neighborhood, in the company of an "amiable Hebrew detective," Bennett assures his readers that "on the East Side things artistic and intellectual are comprehended with an intensity of emotion and understanding impossible to Anglo-Saxons." The real appeal of this book for a Twenty-first Century reader is as a time capsule, a glimpse into the minutiae of daily life more than a hundred years ago. How many history books will describe the whistling noise a dumb-waiter makes as it travels up or down, or the operation of a mechanical egg timer, or the respective salaries of apartment building employees, or show you a telephone operator performing her highly demanding work? Highly recommended.