Goodbye, Stranger

260 pp. Seven years ago, a newly married man Clifford Cotton was abducted by fairies, and a changeling took his place in the world. His mother, who despises the modern world, believes this replacement is a fantastic improvement. On the other hand, his wife desires the return of the man she married, and fairy Clifford also wants to be an ordinary human again. Stella Benson (1892-1933) was an English feminist travel writer and novelist. Stella was noted for being compassionate and interested in social issues. Like her older female relatives, she supported women's suffrage. During World War I, she supported the troops by gardening and by helping poor women in London's East End at The Charity Organisation Society. These efforts inspired Benson to write novels I Pose (1915) and This Is the End (1917). She took on a job at The University of California as a tutor, then as an editorial reader for The University Press. These experiences inspired her next work, The Poor Man (1922). Benson's writings kept coming, but her later works are not well known today. Goodbye, Stranger was written in 1926, followed by The Man Who Missed the Bus in 1928 and finally Tobit Transplanted in 1930, which won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. These were followed by two collections of short stories, Hope Against Hope (1931) and Christmas Formula (1932). She was also the author of Twenty (1918) and Living Alone (1919).