{"id":21174,"date":"2018-12-14T06:50:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T03:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=21174"},"modified":"2018-12-14T06:50:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T03:50:24","slug":"where-no-fear-was-a-book-about-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2018\/12\/14\/where-no-fear-was-a-book-about-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New on Librixov in free chaptered audiobook, <a href=\"https:\/\/librivox.org\/where-no-fear-was-a-book-about-fear-by-arthur-christopher-benson\/\">A. C. Benson&#8217;s <em>Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear<\/em><\/a> (1914).  <\/p>\n<p>Benson was the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.  A writer of short stories, including what are said to be ghost stories in the English tradition and the Edwardian style. An occasional translator of the macabre into English. A poet and a writer of at a least one popular song lyric. He published his diaries in 1926.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/fear.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/fear.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"414\" height=\"554\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21178\" \/><\/a>Partial contents listing.<\/p>\n<p>His 1914 book on fear was admired by the likes of Wilfred Owen, who read it while recovering in a bleak northern war hospital in 1917. One assumes that Lovecraft perused the book at some point, out of professional interest. Although it&#8217;s not listed in the edition of <em>Lovecraft&#8217;s Library<\/em> that I have access to.  He would almost certainly have a read at least one review of it, in the likes of <em>The Spectator<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Lovecraft was aware in passing of Benson&#8217;s essays, since he noted them in the United Amateur in July 1917 while profiling another amateur&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Apart from fiction, Miss Barnhart is fond of books on travel and of light essays such as those of Mark Twain, Stevenson, and Arthur Benson.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If he had read these same essays is another matter. But he did read his equally prolific brother, E.F. Benson, who also wrote rather more impressive ghost and horror stories among <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b4101450;view=2up;seq=12\">much else<\/a>. Lovecraft read and admired these stories, noting Benson&#8217;s work in his &#8220;Weird Story Plots&#8221; work-book.  He also mentioned Benson in his survey &#8220;Supernatural Horror in Literature&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2C65JPe\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/tentaclii\/oldimages\/the-horror-horn-e-f-benson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"311\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21175\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New on Librixov in free chaptered audiobook, A. C. Benson&#8217;s Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear (1914). Benson &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2018\/12\/14\/where-no-fear-was-a-book-about-fear\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odd-scratchings","category-podcasts-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}