{"product_id":"2026200015632-secondhand-clayhanger","title":"Clayhanger","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet against the smoky industrial backdrop of the Five Towns in the English Midlands during the latter half of the nineteenth century, Clayhanger chronicles the turbulent life of Edwin Clayhanger, a young man of quiet intellectual ambition trapped beneath the iron will of his self-made father, Darius. Arnold Bennett masterfully captures the suffocating weight of Victorian provincial life as Edwin struggles to carve out his own identity — as an architect, as a thinker, and ultimately as a man — while navigating the constraints of class, duty, and a society resistant to change. At the heart of the novel burns a passionate, frustrated love for the spirited Hilda Lessways, whose sudden disappearance leaves Edwin adrift in a world of unanswered questions.\n\nThe first instalment of Bennett's celebrated Clayhanger trilogy, this novel stands as one of the great achievements of Edwardian realist fiction, drawing favourable comparisons to the work of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in its unflinching portrayal of ordinary lives rendered extraordinary by feeling. Bennett's prose is precise yet deeply empathetic, illuminating the quiet heroism and quiet despair of men and women ground between personal desire and social obligation. A richly textured portrait of an era on the cusp of transformation, Clayhanger leaves the reader asking the most enduring of questions: can a person ever truly escape the world — and the family — that made them?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203261112539,"sku":"2026200015632-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/ef6bb596-22bb-48bc-b725-0306a6fa8559.png?v=1788146726","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200015632-secondhand-clayhanger","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}