Stella Benson
Stella Benson was an English writer and suffragette born in 1892 in Shropshire, England. Despite her struggles with health and societal expectations of women, she led an unconventional life marked by travel and literary pursuits. Benson's early professional experience included working for the Charity Organization Society, and she owned a shop in London during World War I. She lived in Berkeley, California, after the war and published her first major work, *Living Alone*, in 1919. Her diverse life experiences, including time spent in China, where she married James Carew O'Gorman Anderson, deeply influenced her writing. Benson's novels often featured adventurous, strong female protagonists and explored themes of social change, colonialism, and personal freedom, as seen in her notable works like *I Pose* (1915) and *The Poor Man* (1932). A recognized travel writer, she received awards like the A. C. Benson Silver Medal and the French Femina Vie-Heureuse prize. Stella Benson's legacy lies in her unique blend of humor and serious commentary on social issues, making her a significant figure in early 20th-century literature.
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Subject Terms
Stella Benson
Author
- Born: January 6, 1892
- Birthplace: Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England
- Died: December 6, 1933
- Place of death: Hongay, Tongking, China
Biography
Stella Benson was born in Shropshire, England, in 1892, to Ralph Beaumont Benson and Caroline Essex Benson. A sickly child, she (and many other wealthy women of her time) received much of her care from nannies and was educated primarily at home. Despite ill health, she enjoyed travel and set sail for the West Indies in 1913. Since the idea of women earning money was still somewhat offensive in social circles, she passed her time working for the Charity Organization Society. Benson lived a somewhat eccentric life for the times. A suffragette, she owned a London shop in Hoxton between 1913 and 1917 and moved to Berkeley, California, at the end of World War I. She lived there between 1918 and 1920 and wrote Living Alone in 1919. The following year she took up residence in China, the setting for many of her novels, and she lived there until 1933. In China she met and married James Carew O’Gorman Anderson. She also traveled to Russia and Japan.
Often politically overt, Benson’s work often features strong young women intent on adventure. Her first novel, I Pose (1915) is witty and comic and features a suffragette who, after a life of adventure on the high seas and foreign lands, dies the death of a martyr when an explosive ignites upon her acceptance of a marriage proposal. Similarly, her 1917 This Is the End, in which Benson inserts some of her poetry, features a defiant heroine intent on fleeing her middle-class life to become a bus conductor. While responses to her first novels were mixed, her successful fourth novel The Poor Man, set in China, demonstrates her maturity as a writer and was very well received. Benson was also a travel writer. Her The Little World (1925) recounts stories set in China, Cambodia, Japan, and India; each of them illustrates some of the complexities of British colonial domination. In 1932, the Royal Society of Literature awarded her its A. C. Benson Silver Medal, and in 1932 she received the prestigious French Femina Vie-Heureuse prize. That same year, upon her return to England, Benson found herself a literary celebrity praised even by the likes of Virginia Woolf. She died the following year in China. Benson is remembered for her great humor and satirical wit as well as for her cunning ability to blend fantasy and reality. However, her great compassion for the human dilemma and her expression of serious social issues surrounding poverty, warfare, and colonialism underscore her comic expression.