Riceyman Steps

Edited with an Introduction by Edward Mendelson and Robert Squillace - 'The Bennett novels stand up to anything Europe has put out'. Elizabeth Bowen Henry Earlforward, a shabby Clerkenwell bookseller, has retired from life to devote himself (and his wife Violet) to a consuming passion for money. Miserliness, long disguised as procrastination, can become a fatal illness. Bennett's bleak story is saved, however, by the Earlforward's maid Elsie: buxom, warm, ignorant and sublime in her spontaneous greed for life. "Riceyman Steps" is a modernist masterpiece; a profound psychological and symbolic exploration of the forces of love and death. This edition contains "Riceyman Steps", appearing here in Bennett's corrected version, and its sequel, "Elsie and the Child".