BENSON, E. F. The Inheritor. A Story of Youth.

“WITH THE PUBLISHER’S COMPLIMENTS”

8vo., publisher’s red cloth, ruled in blind and lettered in black to upper cover; spine lettered and lined in black; together in the unclipped printed dustwrapper (7/6 net to front flap); pp. [vi], 11-286, [viii, ads]; the book very good, slight shelf lean and a little fading to the edges of the boards; some spotting, internally, mostly confined to the outer edges of the text block and prelims; lightly offset to endpapers; the good dustwrapper rather darkened to spine, with nicks and chips to the edges and some larger portions of loss to the head of spine, not touching the title lettering; completely unrestored internally, and seldom found thus. 

First edition, with publisher’s six page catalogue to rear dated Summer 1930. This copy with the purple ink stamp to the title page: “With the publisher’s compliments”. 

Edward Frederick Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific writer whose first book, Sketches from Marlborough was published while he was still a student. It was, however, his Dodo trilogy that first found him fame, with plots combining satire, romance, and supernatural melodrama. Later, he went on to pen a number of atmospheric and at times humorous ghost stories for publications such as Pearson's and Hutchinson's Magazines. 

The Inheritor was Benson’s second novel revolving around the plot of a family curse, and reveals the first-born son in each generation to be half-human, half satyr, endowed with features of varying goat-like monstrosities. His first exploration of the theme was in The Luck of the Vails (1901), where a cursed golden goblet is used as the centrepiece of the story. Almost 30 years later, the present work utilises similar themes, combining mystery, crime, and supernatural elements. This time, the focus is the wealthy Gervase family, and a mystery which plays out when the malediction (which has plagued them for generations) seems to be broken with the current heir; the handsome, blonde-haired Cambridge student Stephen Gervase, who for all intents and purposes appears normal and untouched by the spell. 

One of his later works, The Inheritor was written while Benson was in his 60s, but revisits elements from his own University education at King’s College. Brimming with homosexual undertones, it is the relationship between the eponymous inheritor, the charismatic and handsome Steven Gervase, (also an undergraduate at King’s) and the young King’s College don, Maurice Crofts, which mirrors Benson’s relationship with Vincent Yorke (later father of the novelist Henry Green), about whom he confided in his diary, "I feel perfectly mad about him just now... Ah, if only he knew, and yet I think he does." Beginning at the end of term in 1929, Maurice visits Steven in his remote home on the Cornwall coast, where a series of unusual events begin to unfold. Paganism, along with the concept of horned and hoofed symbols lurking in the woods, were popular with fantasy writers in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, culminating here as a village conspiracy. 

“He could hear footsteps now and then in the next room, and now and then a few words rapped out, and now and then a soft moaning sound. Then for a time all was silent, and the silence was broken by the noise, not of a crying child, but of something bleating..."

Increasingly collectable in the scarce jacket.  

SKU: 1800283