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Edward R. Williams is in a terrible state. Set adrift in a world gone awry, he drinks far too much. His hearing is bad, accentuating his emotional numbness; he has felt lost and wandered the world since the end of the war, reeling from the death of his beloved brother Jimmy.
Pitched up in San Francisco, he has vaguely befriended an arty set. Rhoda Romero, Avery Bird, Banner Hope and Melsie Stone Ponting are all somewhat bemused by him, but they are far too busy and self-involved to find him more than a temporary hindrance, and Edward’s curdled Englishness doesn’t invite their sort of intimacy. At one of their parties he meets another English wanderer, Emily Frere, whose brightness, intensity and love of life fascinate him. She is assistant to the famous journalist Tam McTab and travels the world with him and his wife.
As Edward’s addled mind turns fascination to obsession, he learns that the McTabs and Emily have left for China. With no money and very little ability, Edward must find a way to earn a passage to China too. But will he be able to find Emily in that enormous country if he makes it there? Will his anti-social personality trip him up? Edward sets himself the task of his life, and it is no sure thing that such a poor man can succeed in such a brave quest.
The Poor Man was the novel which took Stella Benson’s career beyond its whimsical beginning, replacing her early wide-eyedness with a more knowing and international flavour, whilst retaining her extraordinarily original power and wit. As the post-war scene shook itself into modernity with anger, flippancy and a sense of impatience, Benson recorded the damage, and the change in mood. She created, in phenomenally vivid colours, a heartrending portrait of a wounded soul left thrashing about in a state of bewilderment, starred with moments of desperate humour, which was published to huge acclaim in 1922.
