E. F. Benson


Edward Frederic Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and short story writer.

Early life

E. F. Benson was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, the fifth child of the headmaster, Edward White Benson, and his wife born Mary Sidgwick.
E. F. Benson was the younger brother of Arthur Christopher Benson, who wrote the words to "Land of Hope and Glory", Robert Hugh Benson, author of several novels and Roman Catholic apologetic works, and Margaret Benson, an author and amateur Egyptologist. Two other siblings died young. Benson's parents had six children and no grandchildren.
Benson was educated at Temple Grove School, then at Marlborough College, where he wrote some of his earliest works and upon which he based his novel David Blaize. He continued his education at King's College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he was a member of the Pitt Club, and later in life he became an honorary fellow of Magdalene College.

Works

Benson was a precocious and prolific writer. His first book was Sketches from Marlborough, published while he was a student. He started his novel-writing career with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. He repeated the success of Dodo, which featured a scathing description of composer and militant suffragette Ethel Smyth, with the same cast of characters a generation later: Dodo the Second, "a unique chronicle of the pre-1914 Bright Young Things" and Dodo Wonders, "a first-hand social history of the Great War in Mayfair and the Shires".
The Mapp and Lucia series, written relatively late in his career, consists of six novels and two short stories. The novels are: Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp, Lucia in London, Mapp and Lucia, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia. The short stories are "The Male Impersonator" and "Desirable Residences". Both appear in anthologies of Benson's short stories, and the former is also often appended to the end of the novel Miss Mapp.
Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories, which often were published in story magazines such as Pearson's Magazine or Hutchinson's Magazine, twenty of which were illustrated by Edmund Blampied. These "spook stories", as he called them, were reprinted in collections by his principal publisher Walter Hutchinson. His 1906 short story "The Bus-Conductor", a fatal-crash premonition tale about a person haunted by a hearse driver, has been adapted several times.
Benson's story David Blaize and the Blue Door is a children's fantasy influenced by the work of Lewis Carroll. "Mr Tilly's Seance" is a witty and amusing story about a man flattened by a traction engine who finds himself dead and conscious on the 'other side'. Other notable stories are the eerie "The Room in the Tower" and "Pirates".
Benson is known for a series of biographies/autobiographies and memoirs, including one of Charlotte Brontë. His last book, delivered to his publisher ten days before his death, was an autobiography titled ''Final Edition.''

Links to Rye, East Sussex

The principal setting of four of the Mapp and Lucia books is a town named Tilling, which is recognizably based on Rye, East Sussex, where Benson lived from 1918 and served as mayor from 1934. Benson's home, Lamb House, served as the model for Mallards, Mapp's – and ultimately Lucia's – home in some of the Tilling series. There really was a handsome "Garden Room" adjoining the street but it was destroyed by a bomb during the Second World War. Lamb House attracted writers: it was earlier the home of Henry James, and later of Rumer Godden.
He donated a church window of the main parish church in Rye, St Mary's, in memory of his brother, as well as providing a gift of a viewing platform overlooking the Town Salts.

Personal life

Benson was an intensely discreet homosexual. At Cambridge, he fell in love with several fellow students, including Vincent Yorke, about whom he confided to his diary, "I feel perfectly mad about him just now... Ah, if only he knew, and yet I think he does." In later life, Benson maintained friendships with a wide circle of homosexual men and shared a villa on the Italian island of Capri with John Ellingham Brooks; before the First World War, the island had been popular with wealthy homosexual men.
Homoeroticism and a general homosexual sensibility suffuse his literary works, such as David Blaize, and his most popular works are famed for their wry and dry camp humour and social observations.
In London he lived at 395 Oxford Street, W1, now a branch of Russell & Bromley just west of Bond Street Underground Station, 102 Oakley Street, SW3, and 25 Brompton Square, SW3, where much of the action of Lucia in London and Secret Lives occurs and where English Heritage placed a Blue Plaque in 1994.

Death

Benson died on 29 February 1940 of throat cancer at University College Hospital, London. He is buried in the cemetery at Rye, East Sussex.

Novels

Dodo trilogy:
  1. Dodo: A Detail of the Day
  2. '
  3. '
David Blaize series:
  1. David Blaize
  2. '
  3. David of King's
Mapp and Lucia series:
  1. Queen Lucia
  2. Miss Mapp
  3. Lucia in London
  4. Mapp and Lucia
  5. Lucia's Progress
  6. Trouble for Lucia
Colin series:
  1. '
  2. Colin II
Self-contained novels:
  • The Rubicon |The Rubicon
  • The Judgement Books
  • Limitations
  • The Babe, B.A.
  • The Money Market
  • The Capsina
  • '
  • '
  • The Luck of the Vails
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • The Valkyries
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • The Blotting Book
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • Mr. Teddy
  • '
  • '
  • '
  • Alan
  • Rex
  • Mezzanine
  • Pharisees and Publicans
  • Paying Guests
  • The Inheritor
  • Secret Lives
  • As We Are, A Modern Revue
  • Travail of Gold
  • ''Ravens' Brood''

    Short stories

  • "Adjustments"
  • "The Alliance of Laughter"
  • "And No Bird Sings"
  • "And the Dead Spake—"
  • "The Ape"
  • "At Abdul Ali's Grave"
  • "At King's Cross Station"
  • "Atmospherics"
  • "At the Farmhouse"
  • "Aunts and Pianos"
  • "Autumn and Love"
  • "Bagnell Terrace"
  • "The Bath-Chair"
  • "The Bed by the Window"
  • "Between the Lights"
  • "Blue Stripe"
  • "The Box at the Bank"
  • "Boxing Night"
  • "The Bread of Deceit"
  • "A Breath of Scandal"
  • "The Brick "
  • "Bully"
  • "Buntingford Jugs"
  • "The Bus Conductor"
  • "By the Sluice"
  • "By the Waters of Sparta"
  • "The Call"
  • "Carrington"
  • "The Case of Bertram Porter"
  • "The Case of Frank Hampden"
  • "The Cat"
  • "Caterpillars"
  • "The China Bowl"
  • "The Chippendale Mirror"
  • "Christmas with the Old Masters"
  • "Christopher Comes Back"
  • "The Clandon Crystal"
  • "A Comedy of Styles"
  • "Complementary Souls"
  • "The Confession of Charles Linkworth"
  • "The Corner House"
  • "Corstophine"
  • "The Countess of Lowndes Square"
  • "A Creed of Manners"
  • "The Dance"
  • "The Dance on the Beefsteak"
  • "Dark and Nameless"
  • "The Death Warrant"
  • "The Defeat of Lady Grantham"
  • "Dewan-I-Khas"
  • "Dicky's Pain"
  • "The Disappearance of Jacob Conifer"
  • "Dives and Lazarus"
  • "Dr. Drage's Dilemma"
  • "Dodo and the Maharajah "
  • "Doggies"
  • "Donald Murray's Romance"
  • "A Double Misfit"
  • "The Drawing-Room Bureau"
  • "Dummy on a Dahabeah"
  • "The Dust-Cloud"
  • "Entomology"
  • "The Everlasting Silence"
  • "Expiation"
  • "The Exposure of Pamela"
  • "The Face"
  • "The False Step"
  • "Femme Dispose"
  • "For His Friends"
  • "The Friend in the Garden"
  • "The Gardener"
  • "The Garden Gate"
  • "Gare du Nord"
  • "Gavon's Eve"
  • "Guy's Candidate"
  • "The Hanging of Alfred Wadham"
  • "The Hapless Bachelors"
  • "The Harmonious Blacksmith"
  • "Highness"
  • "Home Sweet Home"
  • "The Horror-Horn"
  • "Household Books"
  • "The House with the Brick-Kiln"
  • "How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery"
  • "Inscrutable Decrees"
  • "In the Dark"
  • "In the Tube"
  • "Jack and Poll"
  • "James Lamp"
  • "Julian's Cottage"
  • "The Lesson"
  • "The Letters of Anthony Noble"
  • "The Light in the Garden"
  • "The Limoges Manuscript"
  • "Love's Apostate"
  • "Machaon"
  • "Middleman"
  • "Miss Maria's Romance"
  • "Mr. Tilly's Séance"
  • "M.O.M."
  • "Monkeys"
  • "Mrs. Amworth"
  • "Mrs. Andrews's Control"
  • "Mrs. Naseby's Denial"
  • "Music"
  • "My Friend the Murderer"
  • "Naboth's Vineyard"
  • "Negotium Perambulans"
  • "Noblesse Oblige"
  • "Number 12"
  • "The Old Bligh"
  • "The Osborne Year"
  • "The Other Bed"
  • "Outside the Door"
  • "The Overture to 'Tannhauser'"
  • "A Pair of Chelsea Figures"
  • "The Passenger"
  • "The Peerage Cure"
  • "Philip's Safety Razor"
  • "Pirates"
  • "Poor Miss Huntingford"
  • "Professor Burnaby's Discovery"
  • "The Progress of Princess Waldeneck "
  • "The Psychical Mallards"
  • "The Puce Silk"
  • "Puss-Cat"
  • "The Queen of the Spa"
  • "Queen's Pawn Gambit"
  • "Reconciliation"
  • "The Red House"
  • "The Renewal"
  • "The Return of Dodo "
  • "The Return of Sherlock Holmes "
  • "The Return of the Probationer"
  • "Revolt in the Temple"
  • "Roderick's Story"
  • "The Room in the Tower"
  • "The Satyr's Sandals"
  • "The Sea-Green Incorruptible"
  • "Sea Mist"
  • "The Shootings of Achnaleish"
  • "The Shuttered Room"
  • "The Simple Life"
  • "Smorfia"
  • "The Snow-Stone"
  • "The Sound of the Grinding"
  • "Spinach"
  • "Starfish and Sea Lavender "
  • "The Story of a Mazurka"
  • "The Superannuation Department, A.D. 1945"
  • "A Superfluous Loyalist"
  • "The Tale of an Empty House"
  • "The Terror by Night"
  • "The Three Old Ladies"
  • "Through"
  • "Thursday Evenings" "Pears' Annual 1920"
  • "To Account Rendered"
  • "The Top Landing"
  • "The Tragedy of a Green Totem"
  • "The Tragedy of Oliver Bowman"
  • "Two Days After"
  • "What Came Into the Long Gallery"
  • "A Winter Morning"
  • "The Wishing-Well"
  • "The Witch-Ball"
  • "The Woman in the Veil"
  • "A Woman's Ambition"
  • "Young Marling"
  • "The Zoo"