The Matador of Five Towns

By Arnold Bennett

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.

This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This is, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.

Arnold Bennett – An Introduction

Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns that formed the Potteries that later joined together to become Stoke-on-Trent—the area in which most of his works are located. For a short time he worked for his solicitor father before realising that to advance his life he would need to become his own man.

Moving to London at 21, he obtained work as a solicitor's clerk and gradually moved into a career of Journalism.

At the turn of the century he turned full time to writing and shortly thereafter, in 1903, he moved to Paris. In 1908 Bennett published The Old Wives' Tale, to great acclaim. With this, his reputation was set.

Clayhanger and The Old Wives' Tale are perhaps his greatest and most lauded novels. But standing next to these are many fine short stories. Bennett bathes us in vignettes of life, of characters, that whatever their ambitions, are easy to immerse ourselves in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787379961

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett was a prolific English novelist and leading realist author during the early twentieth century. In addition to his fictional work, he also wrote selected nonfiction and criticism, including his insightful book How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day.

Book preview

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft.  Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information. 

This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that.  This is, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces.  Join us for the journey.

Arnold Bennett – An Introduction

Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns that formed the Potteries that later joined together to become Stoke-on-Trent—the area in which most of his works are located. For a short time he worked for his solicitor father before realising that to advance his life he would need to become his own man.

Moving to London at 21, he obtained work as a solicitor's clerk and gradually moved into a career of Journalism.

At the turn of the century he turned full time to writing and shortly thereafter, in 1903, he moved to Paris. In 1908 Bennett published The Old Wives' Tale, to great acclaim. With this, his reputation was set.

Clayhanger and The Old Wives' Tale are perhaps his greatest and most lauded novels. But standing next to these are many fine short stories. Bennett bathes us in vignettes of life, of characters, that whatever their ambitions, are easy to immerse ourselves in.

The Matador of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

Mrs Brindeley looked across the lunch-table at her husband with glinting, eager eyes, which showed that there was something unusual in the brain behind them.

Bob, she said, factitiously calm. You don't know what I've just remembered!

Well? said he.

It's only grandma's birthday to-day!

My friend Robert Brindley, the architect, struck the table with a violent fist, making his little boys blink, and then he said quietly:

The deuce!

I gathered that grandmamma's birthday had been forgotten and that it was not a festival that could be neglected with impunity. Both Mr and Mrs Brindley had evidently a humorous appreciation of crises, contretemps, and those collisions of circumstances which are usually called junctures for short. I could have imagined either of them saying to the other: Here's a funny thing! The house is on fire! And then yielding to laughter as they ran for buckets.

Mrs Brindley, in particular, laughed now; she gazed at the table-cloth and laughed almost silently to herself; though it appeared that their joint forgetfulness might result in temporary estrangement from a venerable ancestor who was also, birthdays being duly observed, a continual fount of rich presents in specie.

Robert Brindley drew a time-table from his breast-pocket with the rapid gesture of habit. All men of business in the Five Towns seem to carry that time-table in their breast-pockets. Then he examined his watch carefully.

You'll have time to dress up your progeny and catch the 2.5. It makes the connection at Knype for Axe.

The two little boys, aged perhaps four and six, who had been ladling the messy contents of specially deep plates on to their bibs, dropped their spoons and began to babble about grea'-granny, and one of them insisted several times that he must wear his new gaiters.

Yes, said Mrs Brindley to her husband, after reflection. And a fine old crowd there'll be in the train―with this football match!

Can't be helped! Now, you kids, hook it upstairs to nurse.

And what about you? asked Mrs Brindley.

You must tell the old lady I'm kept by business.

I told her that last year, and you know what happened.

Well, said Brindley. "Here Loring's just come. You don't expect