Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English author who wrote 34 novels, 7 volumes of short stories and a daily journal of more than a million words. He also wrote or co-wrote 13 plays, wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the UK's Ministry of Information in the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. He was the most financially successful British author of his day. Because his books appealed to a wide public rather than to literary cliques and élites, and for his adherence to realism, Virginia Woolf and other writers and supporters of the modernist school belittled him, and his fiction became neglected after his death. Studies of his writing since the 1970s have led to a re-evaluation of Bennett's work, and his finest novels, including Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910) and Riceyman Steps (1923), are now widely recognised as major works.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Bennett

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1899:

A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest recorded score in cricket until being surpassed in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._J._Collins

1954:

Jacobo Árbenz resigned as President of Guatemala following a CIA-led coup against his administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1957:

Hurricane Audrey made landfall near the Texas–Louisiana border, killing over 400 people, mainly in and around Cameron, Louisiana, U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Audrey

2017:

Websites of Ukrainian organizations were swamped by a massive cyberattack, blamed on Russian military hackers, using the malware Petya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_%28malware_family%29

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

prior: 1. (Christianity) A high-ranking member of a religious house or religious order. 2. In an abbey, the person ranking just after the abbot, appointed as his deputy; a prior claustral. 3. The head of a priory (“a monastery which is usually a branch of an abbey”), or some other minor or smaller monastery; a prior conventual. 4. The head friar of a house of friars. 5. The head of the Arrouaisian, Augustinian, and formerly Premonstratensian religious orders. 6. An honorary position held by a priest in some cathedrals. 7. (historical) 8. A chief magistrate of the Republic of Florence (1115–1569) in what is now Italy. 9. The elected head of a guild of craftsmen or merchants in some countries in Europe and South America. 10. (obsolete) 11. A person who is the earliest or most prominent in a field; the chief. 12. (business) The head of a company. [...] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prior

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.   --Emma Goldman https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman