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Arnold Bennett

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Arnold Bennett

by Howard Coster
bromide print, 1929
10 1/8 in. x 9 in. (258 mm x 230 mm) image size
Given by the estate of Howard Coster, 1959
Photographs Collection
NPG Ax2299

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Howard Coster (1885-1959), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 9349 portraits, Sitter in 5 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Clerk, Honor, The Sitwells, 1994 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 October - 22 January 1995), p. 67 Read entry

    Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was one of several members of the older literary generation who cultivated, and were cultivated by, the Sitwells. Osbert was introduced to him by Robert Ross in the spring of 1918 at the Reform Club and within a short space of time he had become ‘Uncle Arnold' to all three Sitwells and dined regularly with Osbert and Sacheverell. Liberal with money (he helped the Sitwells buy into Art and Letters, he was also generous in lending his prestige as a novelist and critic: his preface to the 1919 French Art exhibition catalogue added considerable weight to the project. 'Battle', he wrote famously of the Sitwells, 'is in the curve of their nostrils. They issue forth from their bright pavilions and demand trouble. And few spectacles are more touching than their gentle, quiet, surprised, ruthless demeanour when they get it.’ 1 An interruption in their friendship occurred when Edith fell out with Bennett's young French wife, Marguerite (to whom Wheels 1920 was dedicated), over the Anglo-French Poetry Society that had been initiated by the Bennetts but hijacked by Edith. Marguerite had 'impertinently' criticised Helen Rootham. Contact was resumed after Bennett left Marguerite and it was at a dance at his house in 1924 that Osbert met Georgia Doble.

    1 Adelphi, August 1923.

Events of 1929back to top

Current affairs

The first election held under universal suffrage is a victory for Labour. Ramsay Macdonald returned for his second term as Prime Minster, and appointed Margaret Grace Bondfield as the first woman Cabinet Minister.

Art and science

Two classic books about the First World War are published: All Quiet on the Western Front, by war veteran, Erich Maria Remarque, tells of the horrors of war and the returning German soldiers' feelings of detachment from civilian life; while Robert Grave's autobiography Goodbye to All That, aimed to describe the author's experiences of the war so that they 'need never be thought about again'.

International

The 24th October 1929 becomes known as Black Thursday when the US Stock Exchange Collapses and millions are lost. The event was the start of the Wall Street Crash, which in turn contributed towards the Great Depression: a major international recession that lasted through most of the 1930s.

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