To some extent this is hardly surprising, given the flood of words Benson wrote throughout his adult life.
Benson's prodigious output consists mostly of novels in many styles: sentimental; seriocomic; melodramatic; and satiric. Sometimes he combines several styles, with varying degrees of success. He wrote school stories, ghost stories, plays, sporting texts, and volumes of autobiography and biography. To complicate the huge task of critically assessing Benson's work is the fact that a large institutional audience consisting of subscription and circulating libraries and for whom Benson specifically wrote novels is now obsolete. Nevertheless, there seems little question that Benson merits an honorable, if modest, place in the history of traditional English literature. There is also a sense that Benson's reputation may grow, both on the merits of his work and on its place in literary history.
Edward Frederic Benson was born on 24 July 1867, the fifth child and third son of Mary "Minnie" Sidgwick, called "the cleverest woman in Europe" by William Gladstone, and Edward White Benson, a classical scholar who began his career as the first headmaster of the public school in Wellington and went on to become the archbishop of Canterbury.
This is a free page. This page contains 190 words. This
biography contains 4,992 words (approx. 17 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our E(dward) F(rederic) Benson Access Pass.
