Benighted (Penguin Horror)

PENGUIN HORROR: A celebration of the very best literary horror, a series of terrifying novels and tales that for generations have thrilled, captivated and kept readers wide awake at night.

A group of travellers find themselves marooned in the Welsh countryside by torrential rains and buffeting winds. Desperate to find shelter from the storm, they flee to a crumbling mansion, where they are reluctantly taken in by the cloistered, erratic Femm family. Strange on first meeting, the secretive family’s true peculiarities only become clear as the night unfolds…

A gothic treat shot through with the dejection and anxiety of a world recovering from the horrors of the First World War, J. B. Priestley’s Benighted is a razor-sharp blend of dark social satire and even darker dread.

About the Author

John Boynton Priestley (1894–1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator. In 1922, after refusing several academic posts, and having already published one book and contributed critical articles and essays to various reviews, he went to London. There he soon made a reputation as an essayist and critic. he began writing novels, and with his third and fourth novels, The Good Companions and Angel Pavement, he scored a great success and established an international reputation.

During the Second World War he was exceedingly popular as a broadcaster. Since the war his most important novels have been Bright Day, Festival at Farbridge, Lost Empires and The Image Men, and his more ambitious literary and social criticism can be found in Literature and Western Man, Man and Time and Journey Down a Rainbow, which he wrote with his wife, Jacquetta Hawkes, a distinguished archaeologist and a well-established writer herself.