The Hampdenshire Wonder

Author: J D Beresford

There was a time when the arrival of a new form of human, a homo superior as they tended to be called, would be signalled by the appearance of a sport, an oddity, someone with talents or abilities way beyond the ordinary, but usually in these stories someone to be pitied rather than admired. Such unlikely characters appear in Another World by J.-H. Rosny or Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, or, later, novels like Slan by A.E. Van Vogt; but one of the first and still one of the most interesting was this novel by the little-known English writer, J.D. Beresford. The Wonder is a child born with greatly enhanced mental abilities. To give room for his larger and more powerful brain, his head is somewhat deformed, which inevitably results in his being tormented by the other children of the village. But his mental powers mean that he feels himself superior to the lesser beings around him, so the isolation works both ways. In the end, his intelligence leads him to reject religion, and thus, it is implied, he is murdered by a jealous clergyman. Why itâ€™s on the list: Beresford was himself slightly deformed and the son of a clergyman, so the suggestion is that there is an autobiographical element to the book. Be that as it may, it is a wonderful account of the isolation of a superior child.