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Theodora Benson (21 August 1906 – 25 December 1968) was an English writer.

Early life

Eleanor Theodora Roby Benson was born in Staffordshire on 21 August 1906. She was the daughter of Godfrey Rathbone Benson, 1st Baron Charnwood.

Career

Benson published her first novel, Salad Days, in 1928. She dedicated it to Betty Askwith, her friend and future collaborator. Country Life wrote that it "marked her out as a writer whose humour and freshness were as delightful as her outlook was sane and modern".

Benson's early novels in particular were highly praised. She also wrote short fiction (including thrillers and tales of the macabre), travel books, and an edited collection. She also contributed a weekly feature, "Woman to Woman", to Country Life magazine.

With Betty Askwith, Benson wrote three humorous books: Foreigners, or the World in a Nutshell; Muddling Through, or Britain in a Nutshell; and How to Succeed, or The Great in Nutshells. While the pair were in their twenties, they also collaborated on the novels Lobster Quadrille and Seven Basketfuls.

During the Second World War she worked as a ghostwriter on official speeches.

The collection Best Stories of Theodora Benson was published in 1940. The Spectator wrote:

Miss Theodora Benson presents us with her best short stories, wherein she skips amusingly enough over the face of the globe east and west, and at her ease everywhere. The tales are slick with slickly, amusing dialogue and heroines of magazine-cover looks. But gentleness can be glimpsed sometimes under the Vogue allure.

Death and legacy

Theodora Benson died of pneumonia on Christmas Day 1968, at the age of sixty-two. The Times published an obituary for her, which was followed by additional contributions from Elizabeth Jenkins and Betty Askwith. Askwith wrote in praise of Benson's writing:

Theodora pursued her serious work, and not only wrote perceptive and readable novels but also experimented with new techniques.

In 1971, in the preface to The Case of Kitty Ogilvie, Jean Stubbs acknowledged Benson as having conducted "the meticulous researches" on which the novel was based.

Benson's fourth novel, Which Way?, originally published in 1931, was republished in 2022 as part of the British Library Women Writers series: a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers.

References

1. ^ "Theodora Benson | Orlando". orlando.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2024-12-28.
2. Sprigge, Elizabeth (1973). The life of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Internet Archive. New York, G. Braziller. ISBN 978-0-8076-0685-8.
3. "Hon. Eleanor Theodora Roby Benson - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-12-28.
4. ^ "The Hon. Theodora Benson". Country Life. 22 January 1940.
5. Jedamski, Doris (1995). Images, self-images and the perception of the other : women travellers in the Malay Archipelago. Internet Archive.  : University of Hull, Centre for South-East Asian Studies. ISBN 978-0-85958-835-5.
6. ^ "Hon Theodora Benson". The Times. 28 December 1968. p. 8.
7. ^ Jenkins, Elizabeth (7 January 1969). "Hon Theodora Benson". The Times. p. 8.
8. ^ O'Brien, Kate (7 June 1940). "Fiction". The Spectator. p. 788.
9. ^ Askwith, Betty (14 January 1969). "Miss Theodora Benson". The Times. p. 8.
10. Stubbs, Jean (1971). The case of Kitty Ogilvie; a novel. Internet Archive. New York, Walker. ISBN 978-0-8027-0356-9.
11. Benson, Theodora (2022). Which Way?. British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-5398-4.

External links

• Photos of Theodora Benson at the National Portrait Gallery, London

• 1906 births
• 1968 deaths
• People from Staffordshire
• 20th-century English women writers
• 20th-century English novelists
• 20th-century travel writers