The Old Wives’ Tale

The Old Wives’ Tale is Arnold Bennett’s masterpiece, published in 1908, a sweeping and deeply human novel that follows two sisters across the whole of their lives. Constance and Sophia Baines grow up above their mother’s draper’s shop in the industrial Potteries of Staffordshire, and the book traces how one stays to lead a quiet provincial life while the other elopes to Paris and is caught up in war and hardship. Bennett’s great theme is time itself, the slow and unstoppable way it turns lively young girls into old women, and he tells it with such patience and truth that the ordinary becomes profoundly moving. This free PDF and EPUB offers the complete novel.