Publisher's Synopsis
Lord of the World is a 1907 dystopian science fiction novel by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson that centers upon the reign of the Anti-Christ and the End of the World. It has been called prophetic by Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, a former High Church Anglican Vicar, began writing Lord of the World two years after his conversion to Roman Catholicism rocked the Church of England in 1903.The youngest son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and the society hostess Mary Sidgwick Benson, Robert was descended from a very long line of Anglican clergymen. He had also read the litany at his father's 1896 funeral at Canterbury Cathedral and was widely expected to one day take his father's place as the most senior clergyman in the Anglican Communion. After a crisis of faith described in his 1913 memoir Confessions of a Convert, however, Benson was received into the Roman Catholic Church on September 11, 1903.According to Joseph Pearce, "The press made much of the story that the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury had become a Catholic, and the revelation rocked the Anglican establishment in a way reminiscent of the days of the Oxford Movement and the conversion of Newman."[4]The former Vicar found himself inundated with hate mail from Anglican clergy, men, women, and even children. Benson found himself accused of being "a deliberate traitor," "an infatuated fool," and of bringing dishonor upon his father's name and memory. Although he replied scrupulously to every letter, Benson was deeply hurt. He later wrote that he received considerable solace in the words that an Anglican Bishop had spoken to his mother, "Remember that he has followed his conscience after all, and what else could his father wish for him than that?"After his ordination as a Catholic priest at Rome in 1904, Fr. Benson had been assigned as a Catholic Chaplain at Cambridge University. It was during his stay at Cambridge Rectory that Lord of the World was conceived and written..................... Robert Hugh Benson AFSC KC*SG KGCHS (18 November 1871
