The Book of Carlotta (1905) was Bennett’s third serious novel with a female protagonist. It follows the adventures of the unconventional Carlotta, living on her own as a writer—without a chaperone! Even so, she is confronted with a dilemma: Will she be able to reconcile her ambition with the “wondrous joy… [she finds] in playing the decorative, acquiescent, self-effacing woman.” The book was later reissued as Sacred and Profane Love.
Circa l’autore
Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was a British writer whose prolific output included numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, literary criticism as well as theatre journalism, an opera, and a screenplay. English novelist Margaret Drabble says of him, “Bennett’s books I think are very fine indeed, on the highest level, deeply moving… I feel they have been underrated.”