The Old Wives' Tale (Summarized Edition)

Set between the Staffordshire Potteries and Paris, The Old Wives' Tale traces the bifurcating lives of Constance and Sophia Baines from youthful shop assistants to old age, through marriage, commerce, flight, and loss. Bennett's spacious realism - precise in material detail, steady in pace, and quietly psychological - turns the ordinary into event. Moving from Bursley's drapery to the 1870-71 Sieg...