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Overview
Stella Bensons debut was one of the most acclaimed of her generation: "One of the brightest, most original, and best written books that have come my way for a long time," wrote Sir Henry Lucy. "As the mature work of an experienced author it would have been a remarkable achievement: being the first book of a new writer it is an astonishing performance, hailed the reviewer from The Daily Graphic. In this incredibly original satirical novel we are introduced to the two main characters as The Gardener and The Suffragette, and so they remain throughout. Inhabiting a huge first chapter of 302 pages and then only a tiny second one of 8 pages, these two are wildly comic and disturbingly real at one and the same time. Bensons cheekiness in commenting directly to the reader on the progress of the story, the saltiness of her slightly cynical view of the world and its ways, and the strange newness of the tale she was telling meant that, on first publication in 1915, the literary worlds curiosity was most certainly piqued. We begin by following The Gardener in a shambolic and romantic walking journey, as his inexperience leads him a merry dance through youths many poses, away from his shabby boarding house in London, toward the coast. Along the way, he falls for The Suffragette, but she rejects him. The problem is, she likes him, despite herself. But is she capable of traditional love? And so we also follow her, led through not only her political convictions, but also all the less certain parts of her personality, about which she is blindingly honest. Can she fit love for The Gardener into her busy passion for womens rights? Does she really want to? She thinks probably not. And yet... Both of them are the beautifully mixed, endearingly crazy creations of Bensons unusual talent, which spins its fizzing wit on a sixpence, creating absurd comedy and wise satire out of thin air. Delivering, in its fools progress, one of the significant debuts of its era and one of the funniest novels of the suffragette movement in one package, I Pose was hailed immediately as a classic of a new kind, establishing Stella Benson as a fresh genius of the human spirit, in all its poses. STELLA BENSON was born at Lutwyche Hall on Wenlock Edge in Shropshire in 1892. Having escaped restrictive family life, she worked in London in the suffrage movement and in social work in the poorest areas. She married Shaemas OGorman Anderson in 1921, and travelled the world with him to his many diplomatic posts, mainly in China. She wrote eight witty, highly individual, acclaimed novels, as well as stories, travel essays and poetry. Consumptive for most of her life, she died in Hongay in French Indochina in 1933, at the age of 41. On her death, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary "A curious feeling: when a writer like Stella Benson dies, that ones response is diminished; Here and Now wont be lit up by her: its life lessened."
| ISBN-13 | 9780987483522 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0987483528 |
| Weight | 0.62 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 5.00 x 0.67 x 7.00 In |
| List Price | $15.95 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Pages | 313 pages |
| Publisher | Michael Walmer |
| Published On | 2013-07-01 |
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Alibris
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