Stella Benson

Stella Benson was an English feminist, novelist, poet, and travel writer. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

Benson was born to Ralph Beaumont Benson (1862–1911), a member of the landed gentry, and Caroline Essex Cholmondeley in Easthope, Shropshire in 1892. Stella's aunt, Mary Cholmondeley, was a well-known novelist. Stella was often ill during her childhood and throughout her life. By her sixth birthday, she and her family, based in London, had moved frequently. She spent some of her childhood in schools in Germany and Switzerland. She began writing a diary at the age of 10 and kept it up for all of her life. By the time she was writing poetry, her parents separated; subsequently, she saw her father infrequently. When she did see him, he encouraged her to quit writing poetry for the time being, until she was older and more experienced. Instead, Stella increased her writing output, adding novel-writing to her repertoire. When her father died, Stella learned that he had been an alcoholic.

She died of pneumonia on 7 December 1933, at Hạ Long in the Vietnamese province of Tonkin. Immediately after her death, her husband deposited her diaries to the University Library in Cambridge. Almost 50 years later, they were made available and Joy Grant used them to write a biography on her.