Theodora Benson

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Standard Name: Benson, Theodora
Birth Name: Eleanor Theodora Roby Benson
Styled: The Honourable Theodora Benson
Used Form: the Hon. Theodora Benson
TB published over a thirty-year span in the earlier twentieth century. Most immediately successful among her works in terms of sales were books of the currently fashionable flippant humour, most of them in collaboration with Betty Askwith . TB 's novels, of which the earlier ones were very highly praised, present a cynical world of failed romance, lost ideals, social foibles, and ruthless self-seeking. Some are experimental in form. She also wrote short fiction which draws on a range of settings and periods, and presents an even bleaker world than her novels, in which compassion for the subjects is implied though not directly expressed: best-known of these are her thrillers and stories of the macabre. To her prose fiction both long and short she added travel books, an edited collection, and during the Second World War (when she worked as a ghostwriter on official speeches) an information book.

Connections

Connections Sort ascending Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann 's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell . In her introduction to Thackeray 's Vanity...
Occupation Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ 's war work was done in the Civil Service , first for the Assistance Board which helped in the settlement of Jewish refugees and then with compensation payments to those whose property had been...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Jenkins
In her day EJ knew most of the London literary world. She met Agatha Christie , whom she described as the most elegantly dressed elderly woman I have ever seen.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
148
She counted among her...

Timeline

By mid-October 1930: W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman published...

Writing climate item

By mid-October 1930

W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman published 1066 and All That, which was subtitled A memorable history of England: comprising, all the parts you can remember.

Texts

Benson, Theodora. Best Stories of Theodora Benson. Faber and Faber, 1940.
Benson, Theodora. Chip, Chip, My Little Horse. Lovat Dickson, 1934.
Benson, Theodora. Concert Pitch. Macmillan, 1934.
Benson, Theodora. Concert Pitch. Victor Gollancz, 1934.
Benson, Theodora. Façade. Victor Gollancz, 1933.
Benson, Theodora et al. Foreigners. Victor Gollancz, 1935.
Benson, Theodora. Glass Houses. Cayme Press, 1929.
Benson, Theodora. “Harry was Good to the Girls”. Stories of the Underworld, edited by Peter Cheyney, Faber and Faber, 1942, pp. 191-5.
Benson, Theodora. “Hot-Water-Bottle Love”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 27-36.
Benson, Theodora et al. How to be Famous. Victor Gollancz, 1937.
Benson, Theodora. In the East my Pleasure Lies. William Heinemann, 1938.
Benson, Theodora, and Betty Askwith. Lobster Quadrille. Grant Richards, 1930.
Benson, Theodora et al. Muddling Through. Victor Gollancz, 1936.
Benson, Theodora. Rehearsal for Death. Victor Gollancz, 1954.
Benson, Theodora. Salad Days. Cayme Press, 1928.
Benson, Theodora, and Betty Askwith. Seven Basketfuls. Victor Gollancz, 1932.
Benson, Theodora. Sweethearts and Wives. Faber and Faber, 1942.
Benson, Theodora, editor. The First Time I . . . Chapman and Hall, 1935.
Benson, Theodora. “The First Time I Met the Team”. The First Time I . . ., edited by Theodora Benson, Chapman and Hall, 1935, pp. 283-06.
Benson, Theodora. The Man from the Tunnel, and Other Stories. Victor Gollancz, 1950.
Benson, Theodora. The Unambitious Journey. Chapman and Hall, 1935.
Benson, Theodora. The Undertaker’s Wife. Victor Gollancz, 1947.
Benson, Theodora. Which Way?. Victor Gollancz, 1931.
Benson, Theodora. Which Way?. Doubleday, Doran, 1932.