The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns

The Card is a short 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 chutzpah (in slang a card is a 'character', an 'original'; a clever, audacious, person).