Stella Benson

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Stella Benson (born January 6, 1892 in Lutwyche Hall , Shropshire , † December 6, 1933 in Honkai , Tonkin ) was an English writer . In the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century she gained some notoriety, primarily through her novels .

Life

Stella Benson was the third child of a wealthy English family. Because of her fragile health, she spent most of her childhood and adolescence at home, where she was also taught. The family traveled a lot and also spent some time in Switzerland and Germany . At the age of 20, Benson made a solo trip to the British West Indies for the first time , which she processed in her debut novel I Pose , published in 1915 . Upon her return she spent some time as a social worker in London and eventually started a small business that made paper bags. Due to a lung disease, however, she could not cope with the humid climate in the long run and eventually moved to California for some time , where she did various smaller jobs and finally got a job at the University of California . During this time she published other novels and a volume of poetry. During a trip to China she met the Irish customs officer John O'Gorman Anderson, whom she married in 1921. Her honeymoon consisted of a trip across America in a Ford , which she later described in her novel The Little World . The marriage remained childless. She spent most of her life in China, where she resumed her social engagement. She was instrumental in a campaign against child prostitution in Hong Kong . However, most of the time she spent with her writing work. Benson died of pneumonia in 1933 .

plant

A mixture of reality and fantasy is typical of Benson's novels . She often deals with controversial issues of her era such as women's rights , colonial politics or the First World War, and often works on them in a satirical way. She is particularly critical of British society. Her earlier novels are often set in socially disadvantaged backgrounds in London. The main character of This is the End is a young woman from better backgrounds, who leaves her ancestry behind and works as a bus driver. Living Alone is based in the London social worker milieu. Later in her career, Benson became increasingly concerned with Asia. Her best-known novel, Tobit Transplanted (first published in the USA as The Far-Away Bride ) is about Belarusian refugee families in Manchuria and Korea , which are placed against the backdrop of the biblical book Tobit . For this novel she was awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize and the AC Benson silver medal of the Royal Society of Literature . It was her last completed novel. She died while working on his successor, Mundos , which was published posthumously in 1935. In addition to political motifs, depictions of loneliness and alienation are typical of Benson's work. It is sometimes compared to that of Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West . Even Virginia Woolf was close to her, she met personally. After Benson's death, Woolf repeatedly publicly paid tribute to her work and personality. At the time of her most famous publications, Stella Benson was relatively popular.

bibliography

  • I Pose (1915)
  • This is the End (1917)
  • Twenty (1918)
  • Living Alone (1919)
  • Kwan-yin (1922)
  • The Poor Man (1922)
  • Pipers and a Dancer (1924)
  • The Awakening (1925)
  • The Little World (1925)
  • Goodbye, Stranger (1926)
  • The Man Who Missed the Bus (1928)
  • Worlds Within Worlds (1928)
  • Tobit Transplanted , also known as The Far-Away Bride (1930)
  • Hope Against Hope and other stories (1931)
  • Christmas Formula and other stories (1932)
  • Pull Devil, Pull Baker (1933)
  • Mundos (1935)
  • Poems (1935)
  • Collected Short Stories (1935)

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Kitti Carriker: Stella Benson , in Paul and June Schlueter (eds.): An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers , Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick / London (1998), p. 46f.
  2. ^ A b Joanne Shattock: The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers , Oxford University Press: Oxford / New York (1993), p. 38
  3. ↑ Lorna Sage (Ed.): Women's Writing in English , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1999), p. 52f.

literature

  • RE Roberts: Portrait of Stella Benson , Macmillan (1939)
  • R. Meredith Zehner Bedell: The Novels of Stella Benson , Florida State University (1976)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Benson, Stella
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Lutwyche Hall , Shropshire , England
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1933
Place of death Honkai , Tonkin