In 1910, forced by severe illness to spend 18 months convalescing in a sanatorium, Benson, aged 18, devoted her time to reading and reflecting on the feminist ideas and arguments which were then drawing considerable attention in the popular intellectual and political press she determined to strike out on her own. It is difficult to imagine a less likely candidate for feminine independence than Stella Benson.
At that time, it was usual for girls of her upper-class status to remain in their parents' keep, reared as Edwardian ladies, supported at home until marriage. Moreover, Benson was a frail child, beset by serious respiratory illnesses, often bedridden for months. Judged too sick to attend school, she had been tutored at home by governesses.
WOMEN 40 YEARS OLD NAMED STELLA LIVES IN OK WRITER SERIES
Nevertheless, in 1913, against her mother's objections, 21-year-old Stella Benson left her home in Shropshire for an independent life in London, where she took up a series of jobs to support herself, producing novels which eventually brought her fame as a modernist writer and launching her own "private Stellarian Suffrage Campaign" of argument and persuasion.īy the spring of 1913, the suffrage movement had turned confrontational.
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