Robert Hugh Benson

Robert Hugh Benson AFSC KC*SG KGCHS (18 November 1871 – 19 October 1914) was the youngest son of Edward White Benson (Archbishop of Canterbury) and his  wife, Mary. He was also the younger brother of Edward Frederic Benson.

Life
Benson was educated at Eton College and then studied classics and theology at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1890 to 1893.

In 1895, he was ordained a priest in the Church of England by his father who was the then Archbishop of Canterbury.

Benson's father died suddenly in 1896 and he was sent on a trip to the Middle East to recover his own health. While there, he began to question the status of the Church of England and to consider the claims of the Catholic Church. His own piety began to tend toward the High Church variety and he started exploring religious life in various Anglican communities, eventually obtaining permission to join the Community of the Resurrection.

Benson made his profession as a member of the community in 1901, at which time he had no thoughts of leaving the Church of England. But as he continued his studies and began writing, he became more and more uneasy with his own doctrinal position and, on 11 September 1903, he was received into the Catholic Church. He was awarded the Dignitary of Honour of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Benson was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1904 and sent to Cambridge. He continued his writing career along with his ministry as a priest.

Like both his brothers, Fred (Edward Fredrick/E.F.) Benson and Arthur (A.C.) Benson, Robert Hugh Benson wrote many ghost stories, collected in The Light Invisible (1903) and The Mirror of Shallott (1907). Seven of these stories are included in David Stuart Davies (ed) The Temple of Death: The Ghost Stories of A.C. and R.H. Benson (Wordsworth, 2007) along with nine by his brother A.C. Benson.

As a young man, he recalled, he had rejected the idea of marriage as “quite inconceivable.”. Then in 1904, soon after his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, he formed a passionate friendship with Frederick Rolfe. For two years this relationship involved letters “not only weekly, but at times daily, and of an intimate character, exhaustingly charged with emotion.” All letters were subsequently destroyed, probably by Benson’s brother.

He was appointed a supernumerary private chamberlain to the Pope in 1911, and consequently styled Monsignor.

Robert Hugh Benson: Life and Works, a biography by Janet Grayson, was published in 1998.

Partial bibliography
Science fiction Historical fiction Contemporary Fiction Children's Books Devotional Works Apologetic Works Non-Catholic Denominations
 * A Mirror of Shalott
 * Lord of the World ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * Dawn of All ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * By What Authority?
 * Come Rack! Come Rope! ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * Initiation.
 * Oddsfish!( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * The King's Achievement (Sir I. Pitman and sons, ltd., 1908) ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * The Light Invisible
 * The Sentimentalists
 * The Conventionalists
 * The Necromancers (B. Herder, 1909) ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * None Other Gods ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * The Winnowing
 * Loneliness
 * Alphabet of Saints, with Reginald Balfour and Charles Ritchie (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1905)
 * A Child's Rule of Life, illustrated by Gabriel Pippet
 * Old Testament Rhymes, illustrated by Gabriel Pippet
 * Friendship of Christ
 * Life in the World unseen
 * ''More About Life in the World Unseen
 * More Light
 * Facts
 * Here and Hereafter
 * Confessions of a Convert
 * Religion of the Plain Man
 * Paradoxes of Catholicism ( Complete text at Project Gutenberg.)
 * Papers of a Pariah
 * Christ in the Church: A Volume of Religious Essays

Plays
 * Cost of a Crown, a Story of Douay & Durham; a Sacred Drama in Three Acts
 * A Mystery Play in Honour of the Nativity of Our Lord (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908)
 * The Upper Room, a drama of Christ's passion
 * The Maid of Orleans, a drama of the life of Joan of Arc