One Town, Many Stories

Jewett herself felt that her strengths as a writer lay not in plot development or dramatic tension, but in character development. Indeed, she determined early in her career to preserve a disappearing way of life, and her novel can be read as a study of the effects of isolation and hardship on the inhabitants who lived in the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.

(summary from Gutenberg e-text)

The fictional town of Cranford is closely modelled on Knutsford in Cheshire, which Mrs Gaskell knew well. The book has little in the way of plot and is more a series of episodes in the lives of Mary Smith and her friends, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two spinster sisters. The "major" event in the story is the return to Cranford of their long-lost brother, Peter, which in itself is only a minor portion of the work... (Summary by Wikipedia)

In Deephaven, go with her on vacation to an unforgettable sea side village where time runs slower and small pleasures are intensified. Much space is given to outdoor rambles and sights and events of daily living that draw you into another era. Jewett's loving and gentle descriptions of the people and life of Deephaven will make you sorry when the book is over, and long to be able to find that village for yourself. (Summary by Brenda Price)

Lincoln claimed that he was satisfied "spinning yarns" that made readers feel good about themselves and their neighbors. Two of his stories have been adapted to film. Lincoln's literary career celebrating "old Cape Cod" can partly be seen as an attempt to return to an Eden from which he had been driven by family tragedy. His literary portrayal of Cape Cod can also be understood as a pre-modern haven occupied by individuals of old Yankee stock which was offered to readers as an antidote to an America that was undergoing rapid modernization, urbanization, immigration, and industrialization.... Lincoln died in 1944, at the age of 73, in Winter Park, Florida. (Summary by Wikipedia and David Wales)

Blundell died young and Mary went on to write more than 50 books, using her husband's Christian name as pen name, including this collection of 12 stories set in Little Crosby (‘Thornleigh’).

A romantic portrait of mid-19th century village life written from an aristocratic point of view, In a North Country Village (1896) is built around striking portraits of strong Lancashire women surviving in the face of Hardyesque tragedy and the weaknesses of their men folk. M. E. Francis set many of her books in Ireland and Dorset, but several were set in Lancashire, including A Daughter of the Soil (1895), Yeoman Fleetwood (1900) and Marjory o'th' Mill (1907). (Summary by Phil Benson)

Arnold Bennett chose to fictionalize these towns by changing their names and omitting one (Fenton) as he apparently felt that “Five Towns” was more euphonious than “Six Towns”. The real town names which are thinly disguised in the novel are: Hanley, Longton, Burslem and Tunstal, the fifth, Stoke, became “Knype”.

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was born in Hanley, the eldest child of a pawnbroker who subsequently became a solicitor. Bennett’s father wished him to become a solicitor too, but he failed his university entrance examination and instead became a solicitor's clerk, at first in his father's office and, from 1889, in London.

He showed early promise as a writer winning a writing competition in a local newspaper as a boy. In London he began to see his writing published in popular magazines and he joined the staff of ‘Woman’ magazine in 1893.

His first novel to be published, A Man from the North, appeared in 1898 and its success allowed him to give up other work to concentrate on writing. His first short story (A Letter Home) was written in 1893 and appears in Tales of the Five Towns. (Summary by Martin Clifton)

It is a country town where, as the song goes, 'you know everybody and they all know you,' and the country newspaper office is the social clearing-house." Published in 1904. - Summary by TriciaG & the text

and this perfectly describes its contents. People and nature are minutely observed and the language reflects Miss Mitford's exquisite eye for detail and love of the changing seasons and the impact they have on the flora and fauna around her. The village characters are described mainly fondly, but not without the occasional wry reference to their faults! In her introduction to a later edition, Anne Thackeray Ritchie quotes from Miss Mitford's reply to William Elford when asked if her characters and descriptions are true......."Yes, as true as is well possible....you, as a great landscape painter know that in painting a favourite scene you do a little embellish and can't help it; you avail yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere; if anything be ugly you strike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the picture is a likeness.” But even if seen through rose-coloured lenses, these gentle little sketches conjure up a time and place long gone and transport us for a while to another, simpler world. ( Anne Fletcher)

Scott’s tales of the lives and vicissitudes of Viger’s inhabitants include an established milliner who is upset by the appearance of a younger, more popular rival; an innkeeper whose obsession with the Franco-Prussian War drives him mad; and a strange peddler with a carefully guarded secret that is accidentally revealed.

Duncan Campbell Scott was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1862. He entered the civil service in 1879 and remained until his retirement in 1932. Scott was an honored, skilled and popular poet, short-story writer, and essayist. He died in Ottawa in 1947.

For more information see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_Scott. (Lee Smalley)

The inarticulate and lonely citizens of Winesburg, each with his or her own secret tale to tell, frequently relate those tales to, or through their interactions with, the character of George Willard, a young Winesburg citizen on the cusp of manhood with dreams of becoming a writer. Thus Winesburg tells the story of the townspeople's loneliness and alienation in parallel with the tale of George's own coming of age. The citizens of Winesburg are described obliquely as "grotesques," but as the introductory chapter makes clear, "The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful . . ." (Description by Stewart Wills)