Riceyman Steps

Henry Earlforward, a shabby Clerkenwell bookseller, has retired from life to devote himself (and his wife Violet) to a consuming passion for money. Miserliness, long disguised as procrastination, can become a fatal illness. Bennett's bleak story is saved, however, by the Earlforwards' maid Elsie: buxom, warm, ignorant, and sublime in her spontaneous greed for life. 

Riceyman Steps is a modernist masterpiece; a profound psychological and symbolic exploration of the forces of love and death.

Author: Arnold Bennett

Publisher: Penguin Books

Released Date: 1991

ISBN: 0140182594