number 574 of an edition limited to 1050 copies; limitation page; title page & introduction by E. F. Benson to front. Arthur Christopher Benson, (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet and academic, and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1884, Benson met Henry James, who would later become a close friend. These letters of Henry James to Arthur Christopher Benson, are extracted from a correspondence that extended over twenty years. Some of them (and those among the most interesting) have been omitted because they have already appeared in Mr. Percy Lubbock's admirable edition of his letters; others because they deal with mere trivialities. The residue, here for the first time published by permission of the writer's nephew and namesake, exhibit in his own inimitable manner the two ruling devotions of one of the most lovable of men. We find in them first of all the quality of his affection to his friends. No one valued and needed friendship more than he, and few can have had a larger company of those with whom he established and maintained a special relation. Long intervals often elapsed during which he neither saw nor wrote to them, but, when once the relationship was established, the silver cord was never loosed, and he took hold on it again in all its brightness, and demanded to know all that had happened to the absent and how and when and why.