Stella Gibbons was born on January 5th. A much less well-known writer called Stella Benson was born 10 years earlier on January 6th.
As in previous comparisons, there are some common elements and some large differences in the lives of the two Stellas.
Stella Benson came from a much higher social class than Stella Gibbons.
Stella Benson suffered from ill-health for much of her life whereas Stella Gibbons was fairly robust.
Both writers had alcoholic fathers. Stella Gibbons was 24 years old when her father died; Stella Benson was 19 at the time of her father’s death,
Stella Gibbons was sent to school for the first time when she was 13; Stella Benson was 14 when she first attended school.
Stella Gibbons was brought up an atheist. She converted to Christianity after meeting the man who would become her husband. Stella Benson was brought up in a church-going family, but she came to reject Christianity - and other religions.
Stella Benson was a great traveller and lived in the USA and China, while Stella Gibbons just went to Europe for holidays and lived in the Hampstead area of London for her entire life.
Stella Benson won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for English writers in 1932; Stella Gibbons won this prize in 1933.
Stella Gibbons died in December a few weeks before her 88th birthday; Stella Benson died in December a few weeks before her 42nd birthday.
Stella Benson wrote two books that sound promising as a source of material about unseen influences: Tobit Transplanted and Living Alone.
Tobit Transplanted, which was published as The Far-away Bride in the US, features a young woman whose seven suitors all die; it is based on the biblical Book of Tobit or Tobias, in which a wicked demon kills the seven successive husbands of a young woman called Sarah. The nearest Stella Gibbons ever got to this is in Starlight, where a malevolent possessing spirit is exorcised.
Living Alone is a fantasy novel. One of the main characters is a modern-day witch. It is set in London at the time of the First World War, and much of it is autobiographical. Stella Gibbons wrote several books set around the time of the Second World War; they are based on personal experience, and some have a London background.
I have read Tobit Transplanted and Living Alone, but this was many years ago and I can’t remember much about them.
I will re-read them, and if I find any material relevant to this blog these books will be the subject of a future article.
The two Stellas:
