Stella Benson (6 January 1892 – 7 December 1933) was an English

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, novelist, poet, and travel writer. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

Early life

Benson was born to Ralph Beaumont Benson (1862–1911), a member of the landed gentry, and Caroline Essex Cholmondeley in Easthope,

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

in 1892. Stella's aunt, Mary Cholmondeley, was a well-known novelist. Stella was often ill during her childhood and throughout her life. By her sixth birthday, she and her family, based in London, had moved frequently. She spent some of her childhood in schools in Germany and Switzerland. She began writing a diary at the age of 10 and kept it up for all of her life. By the time she was writing poetry, her parents separated; subsequently, she saw her father infrequently. When she did see him, he encouraged her to quit writing poetry for the time being, until she was older and more experienced. Instead, Stella increased her writing output, adding novel writing to her repertoire. When her father died, Stella learned that he had been an alcoholic.

Writing

Benson spent the winter of 1913–14 in the

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

, which provided material for her first novel, ''I Pose'' (1915). Living in London, she became involved in

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

, as had her older female relatives. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, she supported the troops by gardening and by helping poor women in London's East End at the Charity Organisation Society. These efforts inspired Benson to write the novels ''This Is the End'' (1917) and ''Living Alone'' (1919). ''Living Alone'' is a

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...

novel about a woman whose life is transformed by a

witch Witchcraft is the use of magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to ''Enc ...

. She also published her first volume of poetry, ''Twenty'', in 1918. Benson then decided that she wanted to see the world, leaving England for the United States in June 1918. After stops in New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Chicago, where along the way she met various American writers including Bertha Pope and Harriet Monroe, she went to stay with Bertha Pope in Berkeley. In Berkeley and San Francisco from December 1918 through December 1919, she participated in a bohemian community that included Albert Bender, Anne Bremer, Witter Bynner, Sara Bard Field, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and Marie de Laveaga Welch. She took on a job at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

as a tutor, then as an editorial reader for the university press. Her California experiences inspired her next novel, ''The Poor Man'' (1922). In 1920, she went to China, where she worked in a mission school and hospital, and met the man who would be her husband, James (Shaemas) O'Gorman Anderson, an

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...

officer in the

Chinese Maritime Customs Service The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until it split in 1949 into services operating in the Republic of China on Taiwan, and in the People's Republ ...

(CMCS) and later father of Benedict Anderson and Perry Anderson. They married in London the following year. This was a complex relationship, but a very firm one. Benson followed Anderson through various Customs postings including

Nanning Nanning; is the capital of the Guangxi, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China, southern China. It is known as the "Green City (绿城) " because of its abundance of lush subtropical foliage. Located in the South of Guangxi, Nanning ...

, Beihai, and Hong Kong, even though her writings on China sometimes put her at odds with the

HM Revenue and Customs His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (commonly HM Revenue and Customs, or HMRC, and formerly Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) is a department of the UK government responsible for the collection of taxes, the payment of some forms of stat ...

leadership. They had strong shared intellectual interests. Their honeymoon was spent crossing America in a Ford, and Benson wrote about this in ''The Little World'' (1925).

Later works

Benson's writing continued, although none of her works is well known today. ''Pipers and a Dancer'' (1924) and ''Goodbye, Stranger'' (1926) were followed by another book of travel essays, ''Worlds Within Worlds,'' and the story ''The Man Who Missed the 'Bus'' in 1928. Her most famous work, the novel ''The Far-Away Bride,'' was published in the United States first in 1930 and as ''Tobit Transplanted'' in Britain in 1931. It won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for English writers in 1932. This was followed by two limited-edition collections of short stories, ''Hope Against Hope'' (1931) of which 670 were printed and signed, and ''Christmas Formula'' (1932). In 1931 she received the Benson Medal in recognition of her lifelong contributions to literature. Benson was a friend of Winifred Holtby and, through her, of Vera Brittain. The effects of the news of Benson's death on both women are recalled in Brittain's second volume of autobiography, the first volume of which is the better known '' Testament of Youth'' (1933).

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

also knew Benson, and remarked in her diary after her death: 'A curious feeling: when a writer like Stella Benson dies, that one’s response is diminished; Here and Now won’t be lit up by her: its life lessened.' She was also a friend of

Naomi Mitchison Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical an ...

, who devoted to Benson a chapter in her own autobiography ''You May Well Ask'', with extensive quotations from her correspondence with Benson in the 1920s and early 1930s. Benson's last unfinished novel ''Mundos'' and her personal selection of her best poetry ''Poems'' were published posthumously in 1935. Her ''Collected Stories'' were published in 1936.

Appraisal

According to George Malcolm Johnson, "Stella Benson had a unique ability to blend fantasy and reality, especially evident in her earlier novels and in her short stories. Her impish humour and wicked wit, frequently directed towards a satirical end, masked an underlying compassion. Benson's novels (especially her later more realistic ones) and stories often treat serious social issues and reflect her travails as a twentieth-century woman: supporting female suffrage, witnessing the tragedy of the First World War, and living in a hostile, volatile colonial setting. Despite her very modern, ironic treatment of the theme of individuals lost, isolated, and alienated in strange and frightening situations, she has not garnered much contemporary critical attention, and deserves reappraisal."

Death

She died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

on 7 December 1933, at Hạ Long in the Vietnamese province of Tonkin. Immediately after her death, her husband deposited her diaries to the University Library in Cambridge. Almost 50 years later, they were made available and Joy Grant used them to write a biography of her.

Works

* ''I Pose'' (London: Macmillan, 1915), novel * ''This Is the End'' (London: Macmillan, 1917), novel * ''Twenty'' (London: Macmillan, 1918), poems * ''Living Alone'' (London: Macmillan, 1919), novel * ''Kwan-yin'' (San Francisco: A. M. Bender, 1922), poem * ''The Poor Man'' (London: Macmillan, 1922), novel * ''Pipers and a Dancer'' (London: Macmillan, 1924), novel * ''The Little World'' (London: Macmillan, 1925), travel * ''The Awakening'' (San Francisco: The Lantern Press, 1925), story * ''Goodbye, Stranger'' (London: Macmillan, 1926), novel * ''The Man Who Missed the Bus'' (London: Elkin Matthews & Marrot, 1928), story * ''Worlds Within Worlds'' (London: Macmillan, 1928), travel * ''Tobit Transplanted'' (London: Macmillan, 1930; U.S. title ''The Far-Away Bride''), novel * ''Hope Against Hope and Other Stories'' (London: Macmillan, 1931), stories * ''Christmas Formula and Other Stories'' (London: William Jackson, 1932), stories * ''Pull Devil, Pull Baker'' (London: Macmillan, 1933), novel * ''Collected Stories'' (London: Macmillan, 1936), stories * ''Mundos'' (London: Macmillan, 1935), novel (unfinished) * ''Poems'' (London: Macmillan, 1935) * ''The Desert Islander'' (Harcourt: New York, 1945), novella

References

External links

* * * * *
Stella Benson page
at literaryheritage.org.uk
Stella Benson in the Great War
{{DEFAULTSORT:Benson, Stella 1892 births 1933 deaths 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English poets 20th-century British short story writers 20th-century English women writers British women short story writers English fantasy writers English feminists English travel writers English women novelists English women poets English women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Deaths from pneumonia in Vietnam People from Much Wenlock Writers from Shropshire