See also
| Husband: | Enoch Arnold BENNETT (1867-1931) | |
| Wife: | Marguerite SOULIE ( - ) | |
| Status: | Separated | |
| Marriage | 5 Jul 1907 | Mairie of the Ninth Arrondissement, France |
| Name: | Enoch Arnold BENNETT | |
| Sex: | Male | |
| Father: | Enoch BENNETT (c. 1843-1902) | |
| Mother: | Sarah Ann LONGSON (c. 1840-1914) | |
| Birth | 27 May 1867 | 90 Hope Street, Hanley, Staffordshire |
| Occupation | Author and Playwright | |
| Death | 27 Mar 1931 (age 63) | Baker Street, London |
| Name: | Marguerite SOULIE | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Father: | - | |
| Mother: | - | |
Bennett won a literary competition in Tit-Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full time. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial which was bought by the syndicate for 75 pounds. He then wrote another. This became The Grand Babylon Hotel. Just over four years later, his first novel A Man from the North was published to critical acclaim and he became editor to the magazine.
From 1900 he devoted himself full time to writing, giving up the editorship and writing much serious criticism, and also theatre journalism, one of his special interests. He moved to Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe, Bedfordshire, on Watling Street, which was the inspiration for his novel Teresa of Watling Street, which came out in 1904. His father Enoch Bennett died there in 1902, and is buried in Chalgrove churchyard. In 1902, Anna of the Five Towns, the first of a succession of stories which detailed life in the Potteries, appeared.
In 1903, he moved to Paris, where other great artists from around the world had converged on Montmartre and Montparnasse. Bennett spent the next eight years writing novels and plays. In 1908 The Old Wives' Tale was published, and was an immediate success throughout the English-speaking world. After a visit to America in 1911, where he had been publicised and acclaimed as no other visiting writer since Dickens, he returned to England where Old Wives' Tale was reappraised and hailed as a masterpiece.
During the First World War, he became Director of Propaganda for France at the Ministry of Information. His appointment was made directly on the recommendation of Lord Beaverbrook, who also recommended him as Deputy Minister of that Department at the end of the war.[2] He refused a knighthood in 1918.
He separated from his French wife in 1922, and fell in love with the actress Dorothy Cheston, with whom he stayed for the rest of his life. He died of typhoid at his home in Baker Street, London, on 27 March 1931. His ashes are buried in Burslem cemetery. Their daughter Virginia Eldin lived in France and was president of the Arnold Bennett Society.