The Human Machine - Bennett, Arnold

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Résumé :
As well as Bennetts novels, his non-fiction work has withstood the test of time, and is widely read today. In the Human Machine, Bennett explores the vital questions about how we can operate to our optimum potential. His answers are efficient and practical, and they work for the common man and woman....

Biographie:
Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931) was an English writer. He is best known as a novelist, but he also worked in other fields such as the theatre, journalism, propaganda and films. In 1889 Bennett won a literary competition run by the magazine Tit-Bits and was encouraged to take up journalism full-time. In 1894 he became assistant editor of the magazine Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial that was bought by the syndicate for 75 pounds (equivalent to ?10,000 in 2016). He then wrote another. This became The Grand Babylon Hotel. Just over four years later his novel A Man from the North was published to critical acclaim and he became editor of the magazine. In 1900 Bennett gave up the editorship of Woman and dedicated himself to writing full-time. However, he continued to write for newspapers and magazines while finding success in his career as a novelist. In 1926, at the suggestion of Lord Beaverbrook, he began writing an influential weekly article on books for the London newspaper the Evening Standard. One of Bennett's most popular non-fiction works was the self-help book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. His diaries have yet to be published in full, but extracts from them have often been quoted in the British press.

Sommaire:
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, and critic, best known for his fiction of the Staffordshire Potteries and for a wide body of practical, literary, and cultural writing. His major novels include The Old Wives' Tale, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, and Riceyman Steps, works noted for their realism, social observation, and interest in ordinary lives shaped by work, habit, ambition, and environment. Alongside his fiction, Bennett wrote essays and short books intended for general readers, bringing the same clarity and discipline to questions of reading, conduct, taste, self-improvement, and the use of time.In How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Bennett turns from fiction to practical self-culture, addressing the modern worker's sense of fatigue, wasted time, and unrealised capacity. His advice is plain, unsentimental, and still recognisable: use the day consciously, train attention, read seriously, and refuse to let work consume the whole of life. For readers of classic self-help, time management, personal development, and early twentieth-century English prose, Bennett remains a sharp and highly readable guide to the disciplined use of ordinary life....