Samuel Cranston Benson

Born in 1884 and later known as Reverend Samuel Cranston Benson, he was an American minister and author whose surviving reputation rests mainly on Back from Hell, published in 1918. Library and public-domain records confirm his dates as 1884–1948 and identify that book as his best-known work.

What makes Benson interesting is the way his writing grew out of lived experience rather than distance or theory. Contemporary descriptions of Back from Hell present it as a memoir of a pacifist minister who went to France during World War I as an ambulance worker and then wrote about the conflict in urgent, personal terms.

He also wrote Bible Healing Prayer Book, showing that his interests were not limited to war memoir but included religion and spiritual practice. Reliable biographical detail about his wider life appears to be limited in the sources available here, so the clearest picture is of a clergyman-writer whose books joined faith, conviction, and firsthand testimony.