2026/06/01 by Sasha Garwood · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Literature: history, themes, analysis #Modernist Literature and Criticism #Thomas Hardy Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/0013838x.2026.2674899
openalex created_date 2026/05/22 · openalex publication_date 2026/06/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Whilst novelist E.F. Benson’s attraction to men is widely recognised, his reticence about his private romantic life and his professed distaste for ‘promiscuous immorality’ have led scholars to be equivocal about his sexual practice. This paper examines surviving documentary ephemera (correspondence, diaries, novel drafts, and poetry), suggesting that that far from being repelled by physical intimacy, or separating casual sex abroad from platonic closeness with English male friends, Benson wholeheartedly combined romantic love with desire and sexuality. Highlighting his relationship with artist George Wolfe Plank, it explores how love as spiritual connection and justification for sex emerged in his work, suggesting that Benson’s writing functioned not as a confessional but as a means of selffashioning – creating a version of himself and his desires compatible with a contemporary morality he recognised throughout his career as contextual.