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1892-1933
Novelist; born at Lutwyche Hall on Wenlock Edge, near to the village of Easthope. Her mother was a younger sister of the novelist Mary Cholmondeley from Hodnet. Stella, a delicate child, was educated privately at home and then on the Continent. Prior to the First World War she worked in the East End of London for The Charity Organisation Society and took a deep interest in women's suffrage. She opened a shop in Hoxton and remained there until 1917 during which time she wrote her first two novels, I pose (1915) and This is the end (1917).
In June 1918 she left for the U.S.A. and on arrival took menial jobs before obtaining a post as tutor at the University of California and later as editorial reader for the University Press. In 1920 she decided to return to England and undertook an eighteen month, adventurous journey via the Far East, during which she worked in a mission school and a hospital. In China she met John O'Gorman Anderson, a Customs worker, and they were married in London in 1921. Their honey-moon, which they spent crossing America in a Ford car, was described in Stella's book The little world (1925). They returned to China and lived in obscure and sometimes politically dangerous areas. Stella continued to write novels and stories most of which are now long since forgotten; Goodbye, stranger (1926), The man who missed the bus (1928) and Tobit transplanted (1930) which won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize.
Martin Seymour-Smith in his Novels and novelists: a guide to the world of fiction (1980) states that she was "possessed of a fine imagination whose qualities have as yet gone largely unrecognised." Two volumes of Stella Benson's short stories were published, Hope against hope (1931) and Christmas formula (1932) and she was the author of numerous other stories and travel sketches. She was living in Hongay in the province of Tongking when she died of pneumonia just before her forty-first birthday in December 1933. Stella was a friend of the novelist Winifred Holtby and, through her, of Vera Brittain and there is a moving account of the news of her death and the effect it had upon these two writers in Vera Brittain's second volume of autobiography Testament of experience (1957). Stella's brother George Reginald Benson who inherited Lutwyche Hall, was the author of one novel, Brother wolf (1933).
From An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire by Gordon Dickins, published by Shropshire Libraries, 1987. © Gordon Dickins, 1987.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Christmas formula and other stories (1932)
Collected short stories
Hope against hope and other stories (1931)
The Little world (1925)
Living alone
The Man who missed the bus (1928)
Pipers and a dancer
Poems
Poor man
Pose
This is the end (1917)
Tobit transplanted (1930)
Worlds within worlds
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Stella Benson: a biography (1987) by Joy Grant
Portrait of Stella Benson (1939) by R. Ellis Roberts
The Literary Encyclopedia has a profile of Stella Benson by Marlene Baldwin Davis, College of William and Mary.
Page created 2 September 2001 and last
updated 6 April 2005
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