Books: Words by the Day

ARNOLD BENNETT (385 pp.)—Reginald Pound—Harcourt, Brace ($5.75).

"I am a writer," Arnold Bennett once confessed, "just as I might be ... a grocer, or an earthenware manufacturer." Bennett set himself the task of 1,000 words a day, and through most of his 40 productive years, managed to maintain that rate. In 1907 he announced he would write a major novel of 200,000 words, on Aug. 30, 1908 noted: "Finished The Old Wives' Tale at 11:30 a.m. today. 200,000 words." The last entry in his journal, in the last full calendar year of his life, ends:...