THE MARIETTA JOURNAL

Marietta, Georgia, U.S.A.

21 July 1932

CLARKE LIBRARY NOTES.

The Journal of Arnold Bennett.

For many years, in fact, from 1896 until shortly before his death, Arnold Bennett kept a Journal of the outstanding incidents of his life. The original Journals numbered over a million words. From these a most careful selection has been made. Bennett had an extremely wide circle of acquaintances and friends, and as a result the reader gleans from the entries in this Journal vivid pen portraits not only of Bennett himself, but of Shaw, Galsworthy, Kipling, Mary Garden, William Rothenstein, Frank Harris, H. G. Wells, Aleister Crowley, and countless other named and nameless characters. In everything Bennett did or saw—in his personal contacts, his attendance at theatres and concerts, his excursions to Paris and the Riviera, the novelist in him constantly asserted himself. A scrap of conversation overhead on a bus, a woman seen on the street, a cocotte at the bar of a French cafe, the drama or the humor of countless little episodes in his life—his ceaseless impulse to write made him record all that he saw and heard, and usually in the form of a perfect pen-picture in miniature. As a result, his Journal is completely engrossing and can be read with as much fascination as the best of his fictional work.