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Paris Nights and Other Impressions of Places and People (1913)

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 - 27 March 1931) was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as the theatre, journalism, propaganda and films. Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley was one of the Six Towns that were joined together at the beginning of the 20th century as Stoke-on-Trent and are depicted as "the Five Towns" in some of Bennett's novels. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the family moved to a larger house between Hanley and Burslem.

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Year:: 1913
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    								I--ARTISTIC EVENING

The first invitation I ever received into a purely Parisian interior might have been copied out of a novel by Paul Bourget. Its lure was thus phrased: “Un peu de musique et d’agréables femmes.” It answered to my inward vision of Paris. My experiences in London, which fifteen years earlier I had entered with my mouth open as I might have entered some city of Oriental romance, had, of course, done little to destroy my illusions about Paris, for the ingenuousness of the artist is happily indestructible. Hence, my inward vision of Paris was romantic, based on the belief that Paris was essentially “different.” Nothing more banal in London than a “little music,” or even “some agreeable women”! But what a difference between a little music and un peu de musique! What an exciting difference between agreeable women and agréables femmes! After all, this difference remains nearly intact to this day. Nobody who has not lived intimately in and with Paris can appreciate the unique savour of that word femmes. “Women” is a fine word, a word which, breathed in a certain tone, will make all men--even bishops, misogynists, and political propagandists--fall to dreaming! But femmes is yet more potent. There cling to it the associations of a thousand years of dalliance in a land where dalliance is passionately understood.

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Arnold Bennett

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as the theatre, journalism, propaganda and films. more…

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leveshka_t
You need to add short stories especially of 19th and early 20th centuries by giants like Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, A. Kuprin, Maupassant, Jack London, W. W. Jacobs, Dickens, Bret Harte, H. H. Munro (Saki), Robert Barr, Bram Stoker, Joseph Sheridan le Fanu (The great Irish Horror Stories pioneer), Lucy Mod Montgomery, Sarah Anne Jewett, Rex Ellingwood Beach, Saadat Hassan Manto, R. Tagore and numerous other great short story writers of that golden era. more »
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imagin
I can't find Francis Bacon here. There are related books but not the author in person. I wish I could read his essay ''Of Studies''. I think Francis bacon is as famous as Shakespeare, but unluckily there is not a work of his. more »
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- acronimous
  We've added it here: https://www.literature.com/book/the_advancement_of_learning_3165
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courtneye
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hasmukh.amathalal
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davidb
Very nice website!
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- acronimous
  Thanks David! Appreciated...
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