The Card

The Card is a comic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911 (entitled Denry the Audacious in the American edition). It was later made into a 1952 movie starring Alec Guinness and Petula Clark. Like much of Bennett's best work, it is set in the Potteries District of Staffordshire. It chronicles the rise of Edward Henry ("Denry") Machin from washerwoman's son to Mayor of Bursley (a fictitious town based on Burslem). This is accomplished through luck, initiative and a fair bit of cheek or chutzpah (in slang a card is a 'character', an 'original'; a clever, audacious, person). Denry Machin returned, as the slightly more mature "Edward Henry", in Bennett's sequel The Regent (1913) (titled The Old Adam in its first US edition).