Non-fiction ~ opinion piece¹
Published in The Spectator, 20th April 1934²
945 words
(First read 14/03/2014)
Or: Reading between the Lines, Lesson 93b. Benson appears to argue that superstition leads to religion which leads to Religion and that belief in magic white and black is ... erm ... a natural corollary of all three and that ... erm ... it's only natural that in this day and age that belief should persist among some people. At least, I think that's what he's saying: it's all rather vague. And as for his own beliefs, well, let's just say that he somehow manages to produce an opinion piece which contains no discernible opinion. It's clever stuff, in a way, but at the same time annoying and frustrating.
You can read it online here.
P.S. A bit of imagery Benson uses will put spook story fans in mind of his short story Atmospherics (1928).
¹ This will have to do: it lacks the length, breadth and depth of an essay; isn't about anything enough to be an article; and is far too po-faced to be considered a sketch.
² The article was collected in Sea Mist: Collected Spook Stories Volume 5 (2005).
Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Cavalier & Scrapbook*, 13th January 1912
Collected in The Room in the Tower (1912)
5,905 words
(First read September(?) 1974)
This was the first thing I ever read by E F Benson, as collected in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964). I was ten years old at the time.
It's also well worth mentioning that this was (probably) the second of two E F Benson stories broadcast on the BBC in December 1928, both read by the author himself. This one definitely hit the ether on Christmas Eve. (The other, still to be confirmed, was Atmospherics, qv.). On the same day ~ and at the same time, so presumably on the other channel ~ he read Dickens' Christmas at Dingley Dell from The Pickwick Papers.
*I'm not 100% certain of this title ...
