The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett

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Title: Clayhanger

Author: Arnold Bennett

Release Date: April 28, 2007 [EBook #21249]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLAYHANGER ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Clayhanger, by Arnold Bennett
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This book is one of several written by Bennett about life in the
Staffordshire Potteries in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The hero is Edwin Clayhanger, and we see him through his childhood,
adolescence, early working life, when he was working for his martinet
old father, and to the point where he inherits the business, which is
printing.

Bennett comes from that area of industrial Britain, and the book rings
true on every page.
NH
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CLAYHANGER

BY ARNOLD BENNETT

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

BOOK ONE--HIS VOCATION.

THE LAST OF A SCHOOLBOY.

Edwin Clayhanger stood on the steep-sloping, red-bricked canal bridge,
in the valley between Bursley and its suburb Hillport. In that
neighbourhood the Knype and Mersey canal formed the western boundary of
the industrialism of the Five Towns. To the east rose pitheads,
chimneys, and kilns, tier above tier, dim in their own mists. To the
west, Hillport Fields, grimed but possessing authentic hedgerows and
winding paths, mounted broadly up to the sharp ridge on which stood
Hillport Church, a landmark. Beyond the ridge, and partly protected by
it from the driving smoke of the Five Towns, lay the fine and ancient
Tory borough of Oldcastle, from whose historic Middle School Edwin
Clayhanger was now walking home. The fine and ancient Tory borough
provided education for the whole of the Five Towns, but the relentless
ignorance of its prejudices had blighted the district. A hundred years
earlier the canal had only been obtained after a vicious Parliamentary
fight between industry and the fine and ancient borough, which saw in
canals a menace to its importance as a centre of traffic. Fifty years
earlier the fine and anc