![]() ![]() Edwin, released from the controlling influence of his father, finds himself free to run his business and his life, but his freedom is diminished by his wife's caprices. It chronicles the married life of Edwin and Hilda. The third novel in the series was published in serial form in Munsey's Magazine in October and November 1915, and published in a single volume in New York in the same year and in London in 1916. Bennett includes some scenes from the first book retold from Hilda's perspective. The second novel in the series parallels Edwin Clayhanger's story from the point of view of his eventual wife, Hilda, telling the story of her coming of age, her working experiences as a shorthand clerk and as a keeper of lodging houses in London and Brighton, her relationship with George Cannon, which ends in her disastrous bigamous marriage and pregnancy, and her reconciliation with Edwin Clayhanger. Then he reopens his relationship with the impoverished but exotic Hilda Lessways. He sees through the many hypocrisies of Victorian England, but he does not confront them or become his own man until after his father's final illness and death. He allows his ambition to become an architect to be overruled by his father and instead becomes an office junior in his father's business. Edwin is not aware of his father's history and takes his family's affluence for granted. ![]() Edwin Clayhanger's father, Darius, has risen from an extremely poor background, which Bennett repeatedly returns to, to become a prominent printer in Bursley, one of Bennett's "Five Towns" – his fictionalised version of the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. ![]() This coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England follows Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business and falls in love. All four are set in the "Five Towns", Bennett's thinly disguised version of the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. Though the series is commonly referred to as a "trilogy", and the first three novels were published in a single volume, as The Clayhanger Family, in 1925, there are actually four books. The Clayhanger Family is a series of novels by Arnold Bennett, published between 19. ![]()
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