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Along the Cornwall coast you might come upon a place of wind-swept beauty where a steep lane reached to the uplands with their long view of the Atlantic and a path led down to St. Column's and the gray-roofed village that huddled o the shore of the bay. But the path that would lead into the secret lives of the untrammelled country you would never find, and yet it is along this way that Mr. Benson leads us. The rites and curious means that John Pentreath's wife used to regain his attentions which had been centering on Nancy; the love affair of young Dennis Pentreath and Nell, with its simple laughter and devotion; Nancy's proud marriage to the London artist, and the pitiless fate of old John when he chose drastic means to silence Dennis's opposition and disrespect, combine to carry us into a world of unfamiliar power and wild beauty. This classic works by E. F. Benson, originally published in 1934, is being republished here with a new introductory biography.
About the author
Edward Frederic Benson OBE (24 July 1867 - 29 February 1940) was a novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian, and short story writer from the United Kingdom. E. F. Benson was the fifth child of Wellington College's headmaster, Edward White Benson (after chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, Bishop of Truro, and Archbishop of Canterbury), and his wife, Mary Sidgwick ("Minnie"). E. F. Benson was the younger brother of Arthur Christopher Benson, who penned "Land of Hope and Glory," Robert Hugh Benson, who wrote several novels and Roman Catholic apologetic works, and Margaret Benson (Maggie), a novelist and amateur Egyptologist. Benson attended Temple Grove School and subsequently Marlborough College, where he composed some of his early writings and based his novel David Blaize. He pursued his schooling at Cambridge's King's College. He was a member of the Pitt Club at Cambridge and later became an honorary fellow of Magdalene College. Benson was a gifted and prolific writer. Sketches from Marlborough, his first book, was published while he was still a student. He began his novel-writing career with the (then) fashionable controversial Dodo (1893), which was an instant success, and went on to write a range of satire, romantic and supernatural melodrama, and fantasy.
