Robert Hugh Benson was an English Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism in 1904 and was ordained that same year into the Roman Catholic priesthood. Living for only ten more years, dying at the young age of 42, Father Benson wrote three science fiction stories, seven historical novels, nine works of contemporary fiction, three children's books, seven spiritual and devotional manuals, four plays, ten apologetic works, and several more articles. He penned what some consider to be not only the first dystopian novel of the twentieth century, but also one of the greatest fictional works of Christian apocalyptic literature, Lord of the World.