is such a fearful lot that one might say, that every word seems irrelevant." On 28 June 1906, Benson again wrote in his diary, "I HAVE FINISHED ANTI-CHRIST. And really there is no more to be said. Of course I am nervous about the last chapter – it is what one may call just a trifle ambitious to describe the End of the World. (No!) But it has been done." In a 28 January 1907 letter, Lord of the World was praised by Frederick Rolfe. Commenting on Benson's decision to satirize him as "Chris Dell" in The Sentimentalists, Rolfe wrote, "You are worrying yourself most unnecessarily about me, I assure you... I am laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing though I must confess that I was rather amazed when I heard that everybody recognized me in Chris. It was rather a blow to my amour propre... You will, I hope, reap a rich harvest of shekels from the transaction, and the world will forget The Sentimentalists when it stands wondering before The Lord of the World." Textual error in modern editions Most modern editions of Lord of the World contain an error in Book III, Chapter Five, Section III, carried forward from a printer's error in the American edition of the book. A sentence in the second paragraph of Section III began as follows, in the British first edition: “In short, it seemed that he could do no good by remaining in England, and the temptation to be present at the final act of justice in the East by which those who had indirectly been the cause of his tragedy were to be wiped out…” In the corrupted text found in most modern editions, the passage reads (erroneous portion in italics): "In short, it seemed that he could do no good by remaining in England, and the temptation to be present at the final act of justice in the East by which land, and, in fact, it was more than likely that if she were to be wiped out…” Release and reception Upon its 1907 publication, Lord of the World caused an enormous stir among Catholics, non-Catholics, and even among non-Christians. Mgr. Benson was therefore kept busy answering letters from both readers and literary critics. Mgr. Benson's reading of these letters helped inspire his novel The Dawn of All. In reply to a critic who expressed a belief