Arnold Bennett
A modern-day retelling of Arnold Bennett's novel, in which a Treasury official with a reputation for fiscal prudence is left a great deal of money and has no idea how to cope with sudden personal wealth.
An artist returning from years abroad takes the identity of his dead valet and gets married, but then there are complications.
Priam Farrel is a celebrated artist but a social recluse. When his valet dies of a sudden illness, a mix-up leads to the body being identified as Farrel's. The timid artist then assumes the identity of his former servant, but finds himself faced with constant dilemmas as a result.
A young Chinese woman, working in the kitchen at a London dance club, is given the chance to become the club's main act.
Carlotta Peel, who though sheltered from the facts of life by her Victorian aunt has acquired some knowledge from indiscriminate reading, meets Diaz, a celebrated pianist, at a concert and spends the evening with him. Later, in London, she acquires fame as a novelist and is followed to France by married publisher Frank Ispenlove, who commits suicide when she spurns him. In Paris, Carlotta finds Diaz a physical wreck from drinking absinthe and devotes herself to his regeneration.
A woman leaves her husband to run a Paris boarding house, and reunites with her sister after the war.
1860 ushers in the era of iron ships, Richard Sibley, a builder of wooden ships, stubbornly resists the change, which leads him to forbid the marriage of his daughter Rose to John Rhead, a proponent of the new method. This injustice outrages John's sister Gertrude so much that she breaks off her engagement to Sibley's son Sam. Meanwhile, John and Rose elope.
Jane is a rootless young lady who finds an abandoned child and adopts it as her own. The decision, however, leads to great conflict with the child's vicious outlaw father.
