The Old Wives’ Tale.

BENNETT, Arnold.

$450.00

Item Number: 114732

London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1927.

Signed limited edition of Bennett’s masterpiece. Quarto, bound in original half vellum, gilt titles to the spine, gilt topstain. One of 5oo copies, signed by Arnold Bennett. Near fine in the rare original slipcase.

The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters--shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia--over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest novels of the twentieth century,