Stephen Vincent Ben t (July 22, 1898 - March 13, 1943) was an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War John Brown's Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for the short stories "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1936) and "By the Waters of Babylon" (1937). In 2009, The Library of America selected Ben t's story "The King of the Cats" (1929) for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales edited by Peter Straub.Ben t was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to James Walker Ben t, a colonel in the United States Army, and his wife. His grandfather and namesake was a Minorcan descendant born in St. Augustine, Florida who led the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps from 1874 to 1891 with the rank of brigadier general, a graduate of the United States Military Academy who served in the American Civil War. The younger Ben t's paternal uncle Laurence Vincent Ben t was an ensign in the United States Navy during the Spanish-American War who later manufactured the French-Hotchkiss machine gun.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Vincent Ben t was one of America's greatest storytellers, most famous for his witty and moving tribute to American history, The Devil and Daniel Webster, where a trial for a man's soul becomes a trial of America itself, of all that is best and worst in a great and tumultuous new country. In addition, this collection includes six more of Ben t's best short stories, which in a similar vein, depict compelling and diverse elements in America's great social tapestry, with memorable and often amusing characters: a man whose toothache leads him to encounter Paul Revere on the eve of the American Revolution; a Jewish immigrant who discovers a new experience of life as a trader on the American frontier; a woman brought from Africa as a slave who teaches her grandson the price of freedom; an old confederate colonel, hateful and unwilling to accept the loss of his old world; and an adventurous young man who discovers the folly in all walks of human life. The stories included are: The Devil and Daniel Webster Jacob and the Indians A Tooth for Paul Revere Freedom's a Hard-Bought Thing O'Halloran's Luck The Die-Hard Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer
Among Ben t's most beautiful and moving works are these eight deceptively simple short stories that he assembled as Tales of Our Time. Each tale uses a seemingly commonplace situation-a class reunion, a funeral, teenagers falling in love in the summer, a family embarrassed by a father's crude joke, a marriage quietly failing under cover of social courtesies-to expose the fraught and complex dimensions of the characters' relationship to society and themselves. The picture of America that these stories paint is full of wit and humor, but also sorrow and tragic awareness. They are a reminder to today's reader of how much of our "modern" experience is really universal, and how even those people and societies most changed by the course of progress remain at heart the same people, for better and worse.
This short piece, written by Stephen Vincent Ben t, is a modern drama of the Nativity originally written for broadcasting on the radio. It was originally published in 1942 and is now republished here with a new introductory biography. Ben t was an accomplished writer at an early age, having had his first book published at 17. His best known works are the book-length narrative poem American Civil War, John Brown's Body (1928), and two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936) and By the Waters of Babylon (1937).
