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.
