Living Alone

Living Alone is a fantasy novel by the British novelist, poet, and travel writer Stella Benson (1892–1933). The Chinese edition was translated by Fu Mengxing, a teacher at the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, and published by Lijiang Publishing House in January 2025; it is the first translation of Benson's work into Chinese. The story takes place in London in 1918. One day, just as London's wartime rationing committee is about to meet, an unexpected visitor arrives—a witch. Magic thus enters the life of committee member Sarah Brown. Sarah is a single woman troubled by illness; at the witch's invitation, she takes her little dog David and a suitcase named Humphrey and moves into an apartment called "Living Alone" on Glove Island. From then on she enters a world where flying brooms coexist with the smoke of war: witches, dragons, and fairies appear one after another. In the latter half of the story, the Living Alone apartment moves away, and Sarah moves toward another realm of life. The book is short, ten chapters in all, about 100,000 Chinese characters, and in a light, nimble, faintly ironic style interweaves wartime controls in World War I London with a magical world. The book includes a frontispiece illustration drawn by Benson herself for the original edition, and a translator's afterword, "Magic Dies Only in a World Lacking Passion—War, Magic, and Women Living Alone," discusses the themes running through the book: war, magic, and women living alone. Eileen Chang once said that among foreign women writers she rather liked Stella Benson; Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield also thought highly of her.