SOURCE: Newsome, David. “The Man and His Diaries.” In On the Edge of Paradise, A. C. Benson: The Diarist, pp. 1-12. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

In the following essay, Newsome examines Benson's diaries, noting that they are the most comprehensive document available of one man's life and observations on his time.

I want prejudice, preference, humanity, humour, malice, salinity, a hundred little spices, in my dish.

(May, 1903)

I confess to feeling the most minute and detailed interest in the smallest matters connected with other people's lives and idiosyncrasies.

(From a College Window)

The diaries of Arthur Christopher Benson comprise one of the most extensive and detailed private records of a man's thoughts and observations of his times that has ever been preserved. In all they run to one hundred and eighty volumes and provide (with the single exception of four blank years during a period of mental...