Enoch Arnold Bennett was born in Hanley, Staffordshire (which is now Stoke-on-Trent), the son of a solicitor. He was educated in Newcastle-under-Lyme. After school, he worked for his father, and in his spare time he was a journalist. At age twenty-one, he moved to London to work as a solicitor's clerk. In 1889 he won a writing competition in Tit-Bits magazine and decided to become a full-time journalist. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman, for which he also began writing serial fiction. His first novel, A Man from the North, was published in 1898, the same year he became the editor of Woman. In 1900 he left the magazine and moved to Hockliffe, Bedfordshire, to become a full-time writer. In 1903 he moved to join the artist community in Paris, where he wrote several novels and plays. In 1908 he published The Old Wives' Tale, which was a best-seller. He visited to America in 1911 on a much-publicized trip.
During World War I he was Director of Propaganda for France at the Ministry of Information. He refused a knighthood in 1918. In 1922 he separated from his French wife and fell in love with the actress …
