Stella Benson

Feminist, travel writer, novelist and story writer, Stella Benson (1892-1933) left a significant – and often irreverent – record of life during the late teens, twenties and early thirties in England, the US, Hong Kong and China. Her early experimental psychological fantasies, set in England during World War I, continue to offer insights into the time and the place. Her later more sophisticated works set in China won immediate literary recognition and even now provide an important understanding of the complex cultures of the China Benson knew, one which few other Westerns knew or wrote about. Yet her best writing, as well as her most astute observations on world events during an important part of the twentieth century, is found