Phyllis Bentley

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Phyllis Bentley, OBE (1894-1977), was an English novelist.

Born in 1894 Phyllis Bentley was the youngest child of a mill owner. The family lived in Halifax and Phyllis was educated at Halifax High School for Girls and Cheltenham Ladies' College. During World War I she worked in the munitions industry. After the war, she returned to her native Halifax where she taught English and Latin.

In 1918 she had her first work, a collection fo short stories entitled The World's Bane. She had several novels published over the next fourteen years until the publication in 1932 of her masterpiece, Inheritance, set against the background of the development of the textile industry. Her work received widespread critical acclaim. Two further novels followed forming a trilogy and in 1967 the trilogy was filmed by Granada TV with John Thaw and James Bolam in leading roles. In 1968 she wrote the children's novel Gold Pieces which is a fictionalised account, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy, of the Cragg Coiners who defrauded the government by clipping the edges of gold coins to melt down the clippings so as to make new coins.

In 1949 she was awarded an honorary DLitt from Leeds University; in 1958 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; and in 1970 was awarded an OBE.

[edit] Works (partial list)

1918 The World's Bane (four allegorical stories)
1922 Environment (novel)
1923 Cat in the Manger (novel)
1928 The Spinner of the Years (novel)
1928 The Partnership (novel)
1929 Carr (novel)
1930 Trio (novel)
1932 Inheritance (novel)
1934 A Modern Tragedy (novel)
1935 The Whole of the Story (short stories)
1936 Freedom Farewell (study of the fall of Ancient Rome, the only of her works that was not concerned with Yorkshire)
1942 The English Regional Novel
1946 The Rise of Henry Morcar (novel)
1953 The House of Moreys (novel)
1955 Noble in Reason (novel)
1958 Crescendo (novel)
1962 O Dreams O Destinations (autobiography)
1968 Gold Pieces (children's novel)

In addition to the novels, non-fiction work included scholarly works on the Brontë sisters, the woollen industry and West Riding history and topography.