Arnold Bennett

Against a background of life in the Staffordshire Potteries - a gossipy, myopic, savage community - Anna receives an inheritance but has to contend with her miserly father.

Set in the raw, Victorian world of the 'Five Towns', The Card tells the extremely funny and tangled story of Denry Machin's rise from mediocrity to fame through a series of ludicrous and yet perversely successful schemes. He dances, pleads, cheats and inspires his way through life in a series of set-pieces which wonderfully evoke a now long-gone world of civic balls, seaside excursions, newspaper boys and patent chocolate remedies. As everybody said after one of his most stylish coups, Denry 'was not simply a card; he was the card.'

The Grand Babylon Hotel in London is an exclusive establishment. Mr Theodore Racksole, an American millionaire, visits with his daughter and decides to buy the place. Events then take an unexpected turn as Theodore and Nella Racksole play detective.

The story follows Constance and Sophia Baines from their early years in their father's drapery shop in Bursley, during the mid-Victorian era. It continues through their married lives and on to the modern industrial age when they are reunited as old women.