Book description
Alfred Armistead and Henry Hinchliffe are partners in Blackshaw Mills,
a cloth-manufacturing firm in Yorkshire. The Armistead and Hinchliffe
families differ in politics, in religion, in social outlook, but with
their workmen they are representative architects of the modern social
fabric.
Henry Hinchliffe's children are Edward, the steady man of affairs;
Frederick, the rebellious student; Grace, the reformer. The Armisteads
are Gwen the enigma, Ludo the compassionate, Laura the artistic.
The families intermarry; the war takes its toll. Meanwhile the partners
in Blackshaw Mills quarrel, and reunite; enjoy prosperity, are hard hit
by strike and slump, and presently pass on to their sons their unsettled
problems.
Now the third generation is rising: Geoffrey and Madeline, divergent
children of divergent parents; Kay, illegitimate son. Every generation,
as Feuchtwanger has observed, says in its turn to its parents:
"Sleep in peace! I will be different from you". The generation
of Grace and Laura has struggled passionately with the problems of duty
and freedom, the common good and the individual achievement; the worth
of their struggle will be revealed by the solutions of the next
generation. Geoffrey looks to the right for his solution, Kay to the
left; gradually the transition is accomplished.
Sleep in Peace
combines with deep understanding of men and women all the richness of
the novelist's art. Phyllis Bentley was born in 1894 in Halifax, West
Yorkshire, where she was educated until she attended Cheltenham Ladies
College, Gloucestershire.
In 1932 her best-known work, Inheritance, was published to widespread
critical acclaim and commercial success. This was in contrast to her
previous efforts, a collection of short stories entitled The World s
Bane and several poor-selling novels. The triumph of Inheritance made
her the most successful English regional novelist since Thomas Hardy,
and she produced two more novels to create a trilogy; The Rise of Henry
Morcar and A Man of His Time. This accomplishment made her a much
demanded speaker and she became an expert on the Bronte family.
Over her career Bentley garnered many awards; an honorary DLitt from
Leeds University (1949); a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
(1958); awarded an OBE (1970). She died in 1977.
