A. C. Benson

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox officeholder Arthur Christopher Benson, Template:Post-nominals (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet and academic,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> who served as the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He wrote the lyrics of Edward Elgar's Coronation Ode, including the words of the patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory" (1902). His literary criticism, poems, and volumes of essays were highly regarded. He was also noted as an author of ghost stories.

Early life and family

Benson was born on 24 April 1862 at Wellington College, Berkshire, as one of six children of Edward White Benson, the first headmaster of the college, who would later be Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 to 1896.<ref name = ODNB>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> His mother Mary (née Sidgwick) was a sister of the philosopher Henry Sidgwick.<ref name = ODNB/>

Benson's literary family included his brothers Edward Frederic Benson, best remembered for his Mapp and Lucia novels, and Robert Hugh Benson, a priest of the Church of England before converting to Roman Catholicism, who wrote many popular novels. Their sister Margaret Benson was an artist, author, and amateur Egyptologist.<ref name = ODNB/>

Though exceptionally accomplished, the Benson family met tragic times: a son and daughter died young, while another daughter and Arthur himself suffered from a mental condition that may have been bipolar disorder,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> seemingly inherited from their father. None of the children married.<ref name=RPO>Template:Cite web</ref>

Despite his illness, Benson became a distinguished academic and a prolific author. From ages 10 to 21, he lived in cathedral closes, first at Lincoln where his father was Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral and subsequently at Truro, where his father was the first Bishop of Truro.<ref name = ODNB/> He retained a love of church music and ceremony.

In 1874, he won a scholarship to Eton from Temple Grove School, a preparatory school in East Sheen. In 1881, he went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he was a scholar (King's College had closed scholarships for which only Etonians were eligible) and achieved first-class honours in the Classical tripos in 1884.<ref name="ReferenceA">Template:Acad</ref>

Career

From 1885 to 1903, Benson taught at Eton, but he returned to Cambridge in 1904 as a Fellow of Magdalene College to lecture in English Literature. He became president of the college (the Master's deputy) in 1912, and he was Master of Magdalene (head of the college) from December 1915 until his death in 1925. From 1906, he was a governor of Gresham's School.<ref>The Times newspaper, 22 October 1906, p. 6, col. C.</ref>

"Fasti Etonenses", Benson caricatured by Spy for Vanity Fair, 1903.

The modern development of Magdalene was shaped by Benson,<ref name="ReferenceA"/> as a generous benefactor with a marked impact on the appearance of the college grounds; he appears in at least 20 inscriptions around the college.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1930, the new Benson Court was named after him.<ref name="BHO">The colleges and halls – Magdalene – British History Online. Retrieved 30 March 2010.</ref>

Benson worked with Lord Esher in editing the correspondence of Queen Victoria, which appeared in 1907.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> His poems and essay volumes, such as From a College Window and The Upton Letters (essays in the form of letters) were famous in his time; and he left one of the longest diaries ever written: some four million words.<ref name=diaryreview25>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Extracts from the diaries are printed in Edwardian Excursions. From the Diaries of A. C. Benson, 1898–1904, ed. David Newsome, London: John Murray, 1981.</ref> His literary criticisms of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward FitzGerald, Walter Pater and John Ruskin rank among his best work.

Benson wrote the lyrics of the Coronation Ode, set to music by Edward Elgar for the coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra in 1902. It has as its finale one of Britain's best-known patriotic songs, "Land of Hope and Glory".<ref name = ODNB/>

Ghost stories

Like his brothers Edward Frederic and Robert Hugh, Benson was noted as an author of ghost stories. The bulk of them, in two volumes, The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories (1903) and The Isles of Sunset (1904), were written for his pupils as moral allegories. After Arthur's death, Fred Benson found a collection of unpublished ghost stories and included two in a book, Basil Netherby (1927). The title story was renamed "House at Treheale" and the volume completed by a long piece, "The Uttermost Farthing",<ref>Mike Ashley, "The Essential Writers: Blood Brothers" (Profile of E. F., A. C. and R. H. Benson). Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, pp. 63–70, May/June 1984.</ref> but the fate of the other stories is unknown.

Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories (1911, reprinted 1977) collects the contents of The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories and The Isles of Sunset.<ref>Jack Sullivan, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural. NY: Viking Penguin, 1986, p. 30.</ref> Nine of Arthur's ghost stories are included in David Stuart Davies (ed.), The Temple of Death: The Ghost Stories of A. C. & R. H. Benson (Wordsworth, 2007), together with seven by his brother R. H. Benson, while nine of Arthur's and ten of Robert's appear in Ghosts in the House (Ash-Tree, 1996) – the contents of the joint collections are similar but not identical.

Views

In The Schoolmaster, Benson summarised his views on education after 18 years' experience at Eton. He criticised a trend he found prevalent in English public schools, to "make the boys good and to make them healthy" to the detriment of their intellectual development.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he founded the Benson Medal in 1916 "in respect of meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles lettres".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Death

Benson Court (the Lutyens Building) at Magdalene College, Cambridge

A. C. Benson died of a cardiac arrest at Magdalene on 17 June 1925, and was buried at St Giles's Cemetery in Cambridge.<ref name = ODNB/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Critical reception

Horror critic R. S. Hadji included Benson's Basil Netherby on a list of "unjustly neglected" horror books.<ref>R. S. Hadji, "13 Neglected Masterpieces of the Macabre", Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, July–August 1983 . TZ Publications, Inc., p. 62.</ref>

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch included Benson's poem "The Phoenix" in the first and second editions of The Oxford Book of English Verse.

In 2025 The Guardian's reviewer, Vernon Bogdanor, was unimpressed with Benson's edited diaries.<ref name=diaryreview25/>

Works

• Men of Might: Studies of Great Characters, with H. F. W. Tatham, 1892<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Le Cahier Jaune: Poems, 1892<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Poems, 1893
• Genealogy of the Family of Benson of Banger House and Northwoods, in the Parish of Ripon and Chapelry of Pateley Bridge, 1894<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Lyrics, 1895<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Lord Vyet & Other Poems, 1898
• Ode in Memory of the Rt. Honble. William Ewart Gladstone, 1898<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Thomas Gray, 1895<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Essays, 1896.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Fasti Etonenses: A Biographical History of Eton, 1899<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• The Professor: and Other Poems, 1900<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Schoolmaster, 1902<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories, 1903<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Isles of Sunset, 1904<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• (as editor) Ionica by William Cory, 3rd edition, 1905<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Peace: and Other Poems, 1905<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Upton Letters, 1905<ref name="auto"/>
• The Gate of Death: A Diary, 1906<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• From a College Window, 1906<ref name="auto">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Monnow: An Ode, 1906
• Rossetti, 1906<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Walter Pater, 1906<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Thread of Gold, 1907<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, 1907<ref name="auto"/>
• The House of Quiet: An Autobiography, 1907<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Altar Fire, 1907<ref name="auto"/>
• The Letters of One, a Study in Limitations, 1907
• Beside Still Waters, 1908<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• At Large, 1908<ref name="auto"/>
• Tennyson, 1908<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Until the Evening, 1909<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Poems of A. C. Benson, 1909<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Child of the Dawn, 1911<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories, 1911<ref name="auto"/>
• The Leaves of the Tree: Studies in Biography, 1911<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Ruskin: A Study in Personality, 1911<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1907<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Thy Rod and Thy Staff, 1912<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Beauty of Life: Being Selections from the Writings of Arthur Christopher Benson, 1912<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Joyous Gard, 1913<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Silent Isle, 1913<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Along the Road, 1913<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear, 1914<ref name="auto"/>
• The Orchard Pavilion, 1914<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Escape and Other Essays, 1916<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Meanwhile; A Packet of War Letters, 1916<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Father Payne, 1917<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1920<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Watersprings, 1920<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Hugh: Memoirs of a Brother, 1920<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Reed of Pan; English Renderings of Greek Epigrams and Lyrics, 1922<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Trefoil: Wellington College, Lincoln, and Truro, 1923
• Magdalene College, Cambridge: A Little View of Its Buildings and History, 1923<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Selected Poems, 1924
• Chris Gascoyne; An Experiment in Solitude, from the Diaries of John Trevor, 1924
• Everybody's Book of the Queen's Dolls' House, 1924
• Memories and Friends, 1924
• Edward Fitzgerald, 1925<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The House of Menerdue, 1925<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Rambles and Reflections, 1926<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Basil Netherby, 1926
• The Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson, 1926

Reviews of Benson's poetry

• "The Poetry of Mr. A. C. Benson", Sewanee Review, Volume 14 (Sewanee: University of the South, 1906), 110–111, 405–421.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• "Poets All", The Speaker, Volume 15, 13 February 1897 (London), 196<ref name="google.com">Template:Cite book</ref>
• "Mr. Benson's Poems", The Literary World, Volume 48, 3 November 1893 (London: James Clarke & Co.), 329<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• "Selected Poetry of Arthur Christopher Benson" (1862–1925)<ref name=RPO/>
• "A Literary Causerie" in The Speaker, Volume 15, 13 March 1897 (London), 299<ref name="google.com"/>

References

Sources

• A. C. Benson; David Newsome ed. (1981), Edwardian Excursions: From the Diaries of A. C. Benson 1898-1904, London: John Murray
• A. C. Benson; Eamon Duffy and Ronald Hyam eds. (2025), The Benson Diary (vol. I: 1885-1906; vol. II: 1907-1925), London: Pallas Athene
• David Newsome (1980), On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson the Diarist, London: John Murray
• Edward Hewish Ryle (1925), Arthur Christopher Benson as Seen by Some Friends, London: G. Bell and Sons
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• David Williams (1979), Genesis and Exodus: A Portrait of the Benson Family, London: Hamish Hamilton
• Keith Wilson (1990), "A. C. Benson," Robert Beum, ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Essayists, 1880–1960. Detroit: Gale, 192–204.

External links

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• Works by A.C. Benson, at Hathi Trust
• Essays by Arthur Benson at Quotidiana.org
• Representative Poetry Online
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• Benson, Arthur Christopher (1862–1925)
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