The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary (1912), by Robert Hugh Benson

The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary is a historical novel by Robert Hugh Benson, first published in 1906. It was republished in 1956 under the title Richard Raynal, Solitary, with an introduction by Evelyn Waugh. The novel is presented as if it had been edited from a fifteenth-century manuscript. It describes the life of Richard Raynal, an English solitary or hermit, whose quiet life is interrupted by a vision he interprets as a call from God to deliver a message to the king (seemingly Henry VI). Although the character of Raynal is fictitious, he bears some similarity to the real English mystic Richard Rolle. Raynal travels to London to warn the king that he will face suffering and death, and as a result, is himself imprisoned in the royal palace. In its exploration of fifteenth-century English spiritual life, the novel is particularly concerned, Waugh wrote, with "the conflicting call of solitude and contemplation with that of direct intervention-often rather drastic intervention-in the lives of others." It was Benson's personal favourite of his books. Robert Hugh Benson (18 November 1871 - 19 October 1914) was an English Anglican priest who in 1903 was received into the Roman Catholic Church in which he was ordained priest in 1904. He was lauded in his own day as one of the leading figures in English literature, having written the notable novel Lord of the World (1907). Benson was the youngest son of Edward White Benson (Archbishop of Canterbury) and his wife, Mary, and the younger brother of Edward Frederic Benson and A. C. Benson Benson was educated at Eton College and then studied classics and theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1890 to 1893. In 1895, Benson was ordained a priest in the Church of England by his father, who was the then Archbishop of Canterbury. Benson made his profession as a member of the community in 1901, at which time he had no thoughts of leaving the Church of England. As he continued his studies and began writing, however, he became more and more uneasy with his own doctrinal position and, on 11 September 1903, he was received into the Catholic Church. He was awarded the Dignitary of Honour of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Benson was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1904 and sent to Cambridge. He continued his writing career along with his ministry as a priest.