Benson collaborated with Lord Esher in editing the correspondence of Queen Victoria, which appeared in 1907. His poems and volumes of essays, such as "From a College Window" and "The Upton Letters" (essays in the form of letters) were famous in his time; and he left one of the longest diaries ever written: some four million words. Extracts from the diaries are printed in "Edwardian Excursions. From the Diaries of A. C. Benson, 1898–1904", ed. David Newsome, London: John Murray, 1981. His literary criticisms of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward FitzGerald, Walter Pater and John Ruskin rank among his best work.