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Evening Sentinel (March 28, 1931) [i]; [ii] Evening Sentinel (May 10, 1932)
Bennett’s death from typhoid fever prompted obituaries across the national press. At ‘home’ the Sentinel paid tribute to Bennett by gathering some of these encomiums on a front page special. Obituaries in the Times, the Daily Mail and the Manchester Guardian were taken as ‘Unanimous tribute to the greatness of Mr. Arnold Bennett’. The ‘Signal’, as Bennett dubbed the paper in his fiction, predictably focuses on the author’s relationship with his birthplace and the Five Towns are compared to Hardy’s Wessex. Item [ii] reports on the unveiling of a commemorative bronze plaque at Bennett’s birthplace at which tributes from George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Frank Swinnerton were read out and reproduced here. The Sentinel supported Bennett from the outset by publishing his articles and serialising his fiction and treated the author with all due respect on his death; the Sentinel today continues to promote both the legacy of the city’s greatest literary son and the activities of the Arnold Bennett Society.
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