Conquest of Fear.

 William Benjamin Basil King (1859–1928) was a Canadian-born clergyman who became a writer after retiring from the clergy. His novels and non-fiction were spiritually oriented.

He was born on February 26, 1859, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He was graduated from the University of King's College in Nova Scotia, and served as an Anglican rector at St. Luke's Pro-Cathedral in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later at Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. King began writing in 1900 after he was forced to retire from the clergy due to loss of eyesight and thyroid disease.

He had a stormy childhood and strict religious upbringing, alluded to in his The Conquest of Fear (1921)*, inspired by his fears of becoming blind. As an adolescent who had already for some years been losing his sight along with having thyroid gland problems, the young King was deemed not fit for work. He spent a lonely and melancholy autumn at Versailles in France, unoccupied and alone with his introspection and agonising over his fears of fate dealing him a bitter blow, a total loss of vision.

*Having grasped this idea the new orientation was not difficult. There was in it too much solace to allow of its being difficult. If I state the results it is once more not because I consider them important to anyone but myself, but only because they became the starting-point of a new advance in the conquest of fear.

Within forty-eight hours, with no action on my part except the Metanoia, the change in my point of view, all misunderstandings had been cleared away. The other side had taken the entire initiative, I making no advance whatever toward them. A telegram expressing their hearty good will was followed by an interview, after which I was at work again. The Conquest of Fear (1921)

·         Griselda (1900)

·         Let Not Man Put Asunder (1902)

·         The Giant's Strength (1907)

·         The Inner Shrine (1909)

·         The Wild Olive (1910)

·         The Street Called Straight (1912)

·         The Way Home (1913)

·         The Letter of the Contract (1914)

·         The Side of the Angels (1916)

·         The High Heart (1917)

·         The Lifted Veil (1917)

·         Abraham's Bosom (1918)

·         The Abolishing of Death (1919)

·         The City of Comrades (1919)

·         Going West (1919)

·         The Thread of Flame (1920)

·         Earthbound (1920)

·         The Conquest of Fear (1921)

·         The Dust Flower (1922)

·         The Discovery of God (1923)

·         The Happy Isles (1923)

·         The Bible and Common Sense (1924)

·         The Spreading Dawn (1927)(*first appeared as short story in Saturday Evening Post, 1917)