The cover page is adapted from Suspense, a painting completed circa 1916 by Walter Sickert. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sickertwww.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Riceyman Steps
Chapters (49)
- Part I: I: Riceyman Steps 0:00
- II: The Customer 6:26
- III: The Bookseller at Home 16:36
- IV: Elsie 26:20
- V: The Gift 40:02
- VI: Mrs. Arb’s Case 50:39
- VII: Under an Umbrella 58:19
- VIII: The Carving-Knife 1:04:32
- IX: Sunday Morning 1:16:55
- X: Riceyman Square 1:25:04
- XI: Elsie’s Home 1:33:46
- XII: The Benefactress 1:45:48
- XIII: The Passion 1:52:53
- XIV: A Man’s Private Life 2:10:42
- Part II: I: The Day Before 2:27:20
- II: Elsie’s Retreat 2:44:48
- III: Waxworks 2:52:50
- IV: Vacuum 3:12:08
- V: The Priestess 3:18:56
- VI: The Next Day 3:42:59
- Part III: I: Early Morning 3:55:08
- II: After Breakfast 4:03:25
- III: International 4:20:27
- IV: Afternoon 4:29:57
- V: Tea 4:41:18
- VI: Evening 5:02:27
- Part IV: I: At the Window 5:29:05
- II: Elsie’s Motive 5:42:30
- III: Charity 5:54:40
- IV: No Verdict 6:14:23
- V: Midnight 6:26:06
- VI: Henry’s Plot 6:34:00
- VII: The Night-Call 6:41:05
- VIII: On the Landing 6:58:48
- IX: Violet’s Victory 7:14:23
- X: Departure 7:27:08
- Part V: I: The Promise 7:36:36
- II: The Refusal 7:46:07
- III: The Message of Violet 7:54:24
- IV: Out of the Rain 8:14:22
- V: The Two Patients 8:27:56
- VI: The Second Refusal 8:36:39
- VII: Malaria 8:49:52
- VIII: A Climax 8:58:33
- IX: The Kiss 9:33:53
- X: The Safe 9:43:29
- XI: Prison 9:53:44
- XII: Asleep 10:02:27
- XIII: Disappearance of T. T.’s 10:10:22
How to listen → Problem with this narration? Let us know →
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.”