The Old Wives' Tale

Two sisters in a Staffordshire draper's shop: one stays her whole life, one runs off to Paris and lives through the siege. Bennett got the idea watching an old woman in a Paris restaurant and set out to write the finest novel in English; a good many readers think he managed it. This edition binds 57 plates of painting with the text, among them Munch, Pissarro and Béraud, their streets and markets running from 1821 to 1925.