William Benjamin Basil King (1859-1928) was a Canadian-born clergyman. His novels and non-fiction were spiritually oriented. King graduated from the University of King's College in Nova Scotia, and served as an Episcopal rector at St. Luke's Pro- Cathedral in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later at Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He retired from the clergy in 1900 due to illness, and began writing. His anonymously published novel The Inner Shrine, about a French Irish girl whose husband is killed in a duel, became very popular when published in 1909. The Conquest of Fear (1921) portrayed his own struggle with ill health and eventual spiritual growth, and lays out his somewhat mystical approach to religious understanding. Among his other works are: Wild Olive (1910), The Street Called Straight (1912), and The Letter of the Contract (1914).