Last Works
Benson's writings kept coming, but none of her works are well known today. Pipers and a Dancer (1924) and Goodbye, Stranger (1926) were followed by another book of travel essays, Worlds Within Worlds, and the story The Man Who Missed the 'Bus in 1928. Her most famous work, the novel The Far-Away Bride, was published in the United States first in 1930 and as Tobit Transplanted in Britain in 1931. It won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. This was followed by two limited edition collections of short stories, Hope Against Hope (1931) of which 670 were printed and signed, and Christmas Formula (1932).
She died of pneumonia just before her forty-first birthday in December 1933, at Hongay in the Vietnamese province of Tonkin.
Benson was a friend of Winifred Holtby and, through her, of Vera Brittain. The effects of the news of Benson's death on both women is recalled in Brittain's second volume of autobiography, the first volume of which is the better knownTestament of Youth (1933). Virginia Woolf also knew Benson, and remarked in her diary after her death: 'A curious feeling: when a writer like Stella Benson dies, that one’s response is diminished; Here and Now won’t be lit up by her: it’s life lessened.'
Her last unfinished novel Mundos and her personal selection of her best poetry Poems were published posthumously in 1935. Her Collected Stories were published in 1936.
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