Riceyman Steps

Riceyman Steps, first published in 1923, is set in -dingy and sordid- Clerkenwell, in central London, where -existence was a dangerous and difficult adventure in almost frantic quest of food, drink and shelter.- It-s there that Henry Earlforward runs a gloomy, dusty store full of secondhand books. He eats less and less with every day, keeps his young servant Elsie working long hours for minimal pay, and never lights a candle when darkness will do. One day he takes notice of Violet, a middle-aged widow who owns a confectionary shop nearby, and they become husband and wife soon after.
It quickly becomes clear that his miserliness, his -grand passion and vice,- has rubbed off on Violet, threatening her chances at happiness just as much as his. His obsession also imperils Elsie-s ability to help her lover Joe, who returned from World War I with shell shock, and who desperately needs her.
The year it was published Riceyman Steps won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Its tragic tone represents a departure from many of the novels and stories Arnold Bennett set in the -Five Towns,- the fictional location inspired by his Staffordshire childhood. Instead, it reflects the pain and disappointment of the years immediately following the Great War. As Earlforward tells a customer early on, -We-re not quite straight here yet. The truth is, we haven-t been straight since 1914.-