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... 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. (Google)