The Card A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns

The Card is a short comic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911 (titled Denry the Audacious in the American edition). It was later made into a 1952 movie starring Alec Guinness and Petula Clark. Like much of Bennett's best work, it is set in the Potteries District of Staffordshire. It chronicles the rise of Edward Henry ("Denry") Machin from washerwoman's son to Mayor of Bursley (a fictitious town based on Burslem). This is accomplished through luck, initiative and a fair bit of chutzpah (in slang a card is a 'character', an 'original'; a clever, audacious, person). Denry Machin returned, as the slightly more mature "Edward Henry", in Bennett's sequel The Regent (1913) (titled The Old Adam in its first U.S. edition).

" ...]all the invitations to be out on Wednesday. Good-morning." She was gone. He sprang to the grimy window. Outside, in the snow, were a brougham, twin horses, twin men in yellow, and a little crowd of youngsters and oldsters. She flashed across the footpath, and vanished; the door of the carriage banged, one of the twins in yellow leaped up to his brother, and the whole affair dashed dangerously away. The face of the leaping twin was familiar to Denry. The man had, indeed, once inhabited Brougham Street, being known to the street as Jock, and his mother had for long years been a friend of Mrs Machin's. It was the first time Denry had seen the Countess, save at a distance. Assuredly she was finer even than her photographs. Entirely different ...]."

The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns is a humoristic novel by Arnold Bennett. Bennett was an English author and novelist, here presenting the story of Edward Henry Machin, an impetuous, unscrupulous and sometimes lucky entrepreneur, with not too many morals where business is concerned.

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 - 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He was a prolific writer: between the start of his career in 1898 and his death he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal of more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 different newspapers and periodicals, worked in, and briefly ran, the Ministry of Information in the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Bennett is best known for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in a fictionalised version of the Potteries, which he called The Five Towns.

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