I Pose

"Stella Benson will always be something of a 'writer's writer.' Excellent workmanship joined to insight ... Gifted." - The New York Times




Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing.




Stella Benson began her first novel, I Pose, in 1912. An incredibly original satire: witty, indigent and entertaining, while offering criticism of the social and political order of its time: organised causes, commercialised art, and institutionalised religion are castigated as Benson forces the reader to consider the fundamental problems of personal identity and individual importance in a world that seldom peers behind facades.




We are introduced to the two main characters, The Suffragette and The Gardener. The Gardener assumes and discards a continuous parade of poses: while posing as a shambolic and romantic wanderer, he meets the militant Suffragette, who repeatedly threatens to blow up property in protest for women's rights.




"Stella Benson had a unique ability to blend fantasy and reality ... Her impish humour and wicked wit, frequently directed towards a satirical end, masked an underlying compassion ... Despite her very modern, ironic treatment of the theme of individuals lost, isolated, and alienated in strange and frightening situations, she has not garnered much contemporary critical attention, and deserves reappraisal." - George Malcolm Johnson

"One of the significant debuts of its era and one of the funniest novels of the suffragette movement ... hailed immediately as a classic of a new kind ... a fresh genius of the human spirit, in all its poses." - Michael Walmer

"Stella Benson, of all modern writers, typified that with the most courage, the most humour, and the most skill. She was an artist who gives the impression of never having spent a moment worrying how to be an artist." - Robin Hyde

"I discovered her in a Rebecca West letter and an entry in Virginia Woolf's diary. The thought that I could have gone on without knowing Benson's work is bafflingly scary." - Yiyun Li, The Guardian

"Benson's novels are witty and haunting ... they develop a specifically feminine consciousness [and] seem to glimmer with ethereal magic. Original and significant. For those who dare the disarming challenge, she waits to be appreciated." - Meredith Bedell

"We hardly dare to use the thumb-marked phrase, 'a born writer'; but if it means anything Miss Stella Benson is one. She seems to write like a child gathering flowers ..." - Katherine Mansfield, The Athenaeum

"One of the brightest, most original, and best written books that have come my way for a long time" - Sir Henry Lucy.

"A highly original novelist whose tragic view of life is artfully disposed behind a facade of remarkable comic wit" - David Daiches

"Stella Benson has the same kind of wild and prickling humor that is in James Stephens' Demigods ... enchanting absurdity and tenderness ... our own private idea of a truly great book. " Christopher Morley, New York Evening Post

"Gifted" - The New York Times