Regarded as one of Bennett's finest The Old Wives' Tale (1908) was inspired by a chance encounter in a Parisian restaurant. It follows the lives of two very different French sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, from their youth, through their work in their mother's draper's shop, to old age. The 200,000-word masterpiece was written by hand in ten months during a period in which Bennett suffered from insomnia.