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Edward Frederic Benson OBE (24 July 1867 – 29 February 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer.

E.F. Benson

OBE
BornEdward Frederic Benson
(1867-07-24)24 July 1867
Wellington College, Berkshire, England
Died29 February 1940(1940-02-29) (aged 72)
University College Hospital, London, England
OccupationWriter
Notable works
  • Mapp and Lucia series
  • Dodo series
Notable awardsOBE
RelativesEdward White Benson (father)
Robert Hugh Benson (brother)
A.C. Benson (brother)
Margaret Benson (sister)

Early life


The Benson brothers, 1907.
The Benson brothers, 1907.

E.F. Benson was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, the fifth child of the headmaster, Edward White Benson (later chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, Bishop of Truro and Archbishop of Canterbury), and his wife born Mary Sidgwick ("Minnie").

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 (Maggie), 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.[1] At Cambridge, he was a member of the Pitt Club,[2] and later in life he became an honorary fellow of Magdalene College.[1]


Works


Title page of Miss Mapp, 1922.
Title page of Miss Mapp, 1922.

Benson's first book published was Sketches from Marlborough. He started his novel-writing career with the (then) fashionably controversial Dodo (1893), 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 (which she "gleefully acknowledged", according to actress Prunella Scales[3]), with the same cast of characters a generation later: Dodo the Second (1914), "a unique chronicle of the pre-1914 Bright Young Things" and Dodo Wonders (1921), "a first-hand social history of the Great War in Mayfair and the Shires".[3]

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 (published as The Worshipful Lucia in the United States) 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.

In February 1983 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Trouble for Lucia – a 12-part adaptation by Aubrey Woods of the first four novels. In April and May 2007 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Mapp and Lucia – a 10-part adaptation by Ned Sherrin. In 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Lucia's Progress – a five-part dramatisation by John Peacock of the fifth novel.

The last three novels were dramatised by Gerald Savory for a 10-episode TV series produced by London Weekend Television and broadcast in two five-part runs between 1985 and 1986 on the then recently launched Channel 4. Titled Mapp and Lucia, the series featured Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, Prunella Scales as Mapp and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie. In 2007 the British channel ITV3 broadcast the 1985–1986 series. A three-part dramatisation by Steve Pemberton – starring Miranda Richardson as Mapp, Anna Chancellor as Lucia and Steve Pemberton as Georgie – was broadcast on BBC One over consecutive evenings between 29 and 31 December 2014.[4]

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, 20 of which were illustrated by Edmund Blampied. These "spook stories", as they were termed, 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, notably during 1944 (for the movie Dead of Night and as an anecdote in Bennett Cerf's Ghost Stories anthology published the same year) and for a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone. The catchphrase from the story, "Room for one more", created a legend,[5] and also occurs in the 1986 Oingo Boingo song "Dead Man's Party".

Benson's story David Blaize and the Blue Door (1918) is a children's fantasy influenced by the work of Lewis Carroll.[6] "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 10 days before his death, was an autobiography titled Final Edition.

H.P. Lovecraft spoke well of Benson's works in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", most notably of his story "The Man Who Went Too Far".

Further "Mapp and Lucia" books have been written by Tom Holt, Guy Fraser-Sampson, and Ian Shepherd.



Lamb House, home of E.F. Benson and model for Mallards in the Lucia series
Lamb House, home of E.F. Benson and model for "Mallards" in the Lucia series

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 for many years and served as mayor from 1934 (he relocated there in 1918). 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.[7] 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.[8]


Personal life


Benson was gay, but was intensely discreet.[9] At Cambridge, he fell in love with several fellow students, including Vincent Yorke (father of the novelist Henry 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."[10] In later life, Benson maintained friendships with a wide circle of gay men and shared a villa on the Italian island of Capri with John Ellingham Brooks;[11] before the First World War, the island had been popular with wealthy gay men.

Homoeroticism and a general homosexual sensibility suffuses his literary works, such as David Blaize (1916), and his most popular works are famed for their wry and dry camp humour and social observations.

Benson was a good athlete, and represented England at figure skating. He was a precocious and prolific writer, publishing his first book while still a student.

In London, Benson also 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 occurs and where English Heritage placed a Blue Plaque during 1994.


Death


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


Bibliography



Novels


Dodo trilogy:

  1. Dodo: A Detail of the Day (1893)
  2. Dodo's Daughter (1913; published in the UK [1914] as Dodo the Second)
  3. Dodo Wonders (1921)

David Blaize series:

  1. David Blaize (1916)
  2. David Blaize and the Blue Door (1918)
  3. David of King's (1924; published in the United States as David Blaize of King's)

Mapp and Lucia series:

  1. Queen Lucia (1920)
  2. Miss Mapp (1922 [UK]; published in the United States 1923)
  3. Lucia in London (1927 [UK]; published in the United States 1928)
  4. Mapp and Lucia (1931)
  5. Lucia's Progress (1935; published in the United States as The Worshipful Lucia)
  6. Trouble for Lucia (1939)

Colin series:

  1. Colin: A Novel (1923)
  2. Colin II (1925)

Stand-alones:


Short stories


Collections:

Uncollected short stories:


Plays



Non-fiction


Articles (selected)
Autobiographies
Biographies
Guides
History
Opinion
Pamphlets
Society
Sports
Others

Adaptations



See also



References


  1. "Benson, Edward Frederic (BN887EF)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. Benson, Edward Frederic (1920). Our Family Affairs, 1867–1896. London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd. p. 231.
  3. Introduction by Prunella Scales to Dodo: An Omnibus. Introduction in 1986 edition from The Hogarth Press. Original publication of novels 1893, 1914, 1921.
  4. "New adaptation of E. F. Benson's 'Mapp and Lucia' on BBC1". 21 December 2014.
  5. "Snopes entry on the urban legend based on the Benson story". Snopes.com. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  6. Morgan, Chris, "E.F. Benson" in, E.F. Bleiler, ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers. New York: Scribner's, 1985. pp.491–496. ISBN 0-684-17808-7
  7. "Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex". www.ryesussex.co.uk. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  8. "E F Benson". www.tilling.org.uk. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  9. Aldrich, Robert ; Wotherspoon, Garry: Who's Who In Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II, Routledge, p49
  10. Masters, Brian "The Life of E.F. Benson", Chatto & Windus, 1992, p86
  11. Palmer, Geoffrey: E.F. Benson, As He Was, Lennard Pub, 1988
  12. "Review: Account Rendered by E.F. Benson". The Athenæum (4350): 273. 11 March 1911.
  13. "Play Dinner for Eight". Great War Theatre. Retrieved 6 December 2019.

Further reading





Online editions



Libraries



На других языках


- [en] E. F. Benson

[ru] Бенсон, Эдвард Фредерик

Эдвард Фредерик Бенсон (англ. Edward Frederic Benson, 24 июля 1867, Веллингтонский колледж — 29 февраля 1940, Лондон) — английский писатель.



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