Afterword: ‘Oho, what next?…’ ~ Stella Benson: editor

Abstract

Pull Devil, Pull Baker, first published in 1933, is one of a series of 'forgotten texts' which are being republished by Boiler House Press. It is a text which weaves together the stories of the fantastical Count de Toulouse Lautrec de Savine with Stella Benson's interpolations and her own stories. In the third chapter of Pull Devil, Pull Baker, Benson questions her role in this book: ‘Sometimes, I wonder whether I am editing the Count de Savine or he me. What seems to me the extreme remoteness of his point of view makes me quite giddy' (46). The afterword explores Benson’s wit and generosity, but also her ability to experiment with form and genre. Her thoughts on being an editor are illuminating as she occasionally edits, but often reproduces verbatim, Count de Toulouse Lautrec de Savine’s accounts of his extraordinary and often outrageous escapades, escapades which might lead a reader to question that such a man existed and so this afterword discusses the stories told by the Count, and Benson's own role in bringing his stories to public attention.