The Old Wives' Tale

The Old Wives' Tale, Bennett, Arnold. Published by The Folio Society, London, 2004. 4to up to 12" tall. 546 pages with introduction by Tim Heald and nine full page colour lithographs by Glynn Boyd Harte. Tan cloth boards with blue stamped wrap around illustrations; white spine titles; tan endpapers. Pictorial slipcase. Both volume and slipcase in pristine condition. The text of this edition follows that of the Hodder & Stoughton 1912 edition, with minor emendations." H.G. Wells described The Old Wives' Tale as "by far the finest long novel written in English and in the English fashion". 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Old Wives' Tale No. 87 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. First published in 1908, 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 lives of the sisters 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 the Staffordshire Potteries to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris.