num_pages: 569
description: The Old Wives' Tale (1908) celebrates the romance of even the most ordinary lives as it tells the story of the two Baines sisters, placid stay-at-home Constance and rebellious Sophia, from their girlhood to their last days. They move from the family drapery shop in provincial Bursley duringthe repressive mid-Victorian period to old age in the modern era of mass marketing and the internal combustion engine. The setting ranges from the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Bursley to a Paris brothel, the action from the controlled domestic routine of the Baines household to wife murder and theSiege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1.This edition of The Old Wives' Tale gives fascinating critical insights into Bennett's most wide-ranging novel, considered by many to be his masterpiece.
language: English
title: The Old Wives' Tale
titlecomplete: The Old Wives' Tale
characters: Gerald Scales, Sophia Baines, Constance Baines, Samuel Povey
genres: 20th Century, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novels, Literature, Victorian, Classics, British Literature, Fiction, France
ratings_count: 4458
places: Paris, Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom, Bursley (Stoke on Trent), England
series: The Five Towns
publisher: Indypublish.Com