Stella Benson lived a life of travel and adventure despite chronic ill health and bouts of depression. Her seven novels, for which she is best known, reflect her extensive travels in their meticulously and delightfully described exotic settings and her insight into ways of thinking in foreign cultures, and these led Geoffrey West to claim that "Stella Benson has cultivated the world; she is the true novelist of (in Mr. Wells's word) cosmocracy, equally at home in every continent and with people of whatever colour or creed." Nevertheless, she remained staunchly English in her outlook, one of several paradoxes in her life and writing. She frequently satirized various aspects of foreign cultures--particularly American, though she was no easier on the English colonial mentality. After writing an acerbic article about Hong Kong near the end of her life, she stated, "I have never dreamed that there was any danger...