Arthur Christopher Benson, FRSL (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet and academic,[1] and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

He wrote the lyrics of Edward Elgar's Coronation Ode, including the words of the patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory" (1902).

[4] From 1885 to 1903 Benson taught at Eton, but returned to Cambridge in 1904 as a Fellow of Magdalene College to lecture in English Literature.

[10] His literary criticisms of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward FitzGerald, Walter Pater and John Ruskin rank among his best work.

The bulk of them, in two volumes, The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories (1903) and The Isles of Sunset (1904), were written for his pupils as moral allegories.

After Arthur's death, Fred Benson found a collection of unpublished ghost stories and included two in a book, Basil Netherby (1927).

[13] A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he founded the Benson Medal in 1916 "in respect of meritorious works in poetry, fiction, history and belles lettres".

[16] Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch included Benson's poem "The Phoenix" in the first and second editions of The Oxford Book of English Verse.