Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English novelist, born in Hanley, Staffordshire, the son of a solicitor, who went to London as a clerk and became editor of a women's magazine before turning to fiction. His serious novels, The Old Wives' Tale, Clayhanger and Riceyman Steps, are set in the Potteries, the industrial Five Towns of his childhood, and are written in the realist manner of the French novelists he admired. He also produced light fiction such as The Grand Babylon Hotel, plays, journalism and self-help books, and was for a time the highest-paid literary journalist in England. The omelette named after him is still served at the Savoy.