Constance and Sophia Baines grow up above their parents’ drapery shop on the square in Bursley, one of the Five Towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. Constance stays, marries the shop assistant and lives out a quiet provincial life; Sophia elopes with a commercial traveller to Paris and lives through the siege of 1870.
Bennett’s 1908 masterpiece on time and ordinary lives, often ranked among the finest English novels of its century. Download the free EPUB.