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One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whomsoever chose to visit him.

One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whosoever chose to visit him.

What is the correct fit among the two here?

For me, any confusion between whomever and whoever boils down to a choice between him and he. Going by the same logic, it is "he chose to visit him" and not "him chose to visit him". So I thought it should be "whosoever" instead of "whomsoever".

But according to my book "whomsoever" is correct.

Please clarify the difference.

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    Your book is wrong. You're right; whosoever is the subject of chose, and that means it can't be whomsoever. In general, I would recommend that no one ever use the word whomsoever at all; nor even the word whom. They're not useful and confuse even native speakers. Who can work in any situation; whom is never required.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 20:51
  • "Whatsoever" seems natural, especially in a legal context. "Whomsoever" does not. Are there any examples where "whomsoever" is appropriate, and "whomever" is not? I use "whom" sometimes; I use "whomever" rarely; I cannot recall the last time I used "whomsoever". (No, I do not expect the original poster to provide such examples.)
    – Jasper
    Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 20:56
  • @John, whomsoever follows of and so is governed by that. chose is subordinate to the whomsoever and has no effect here.
    – Toby Speight
    Commented Nov 10, 2016 at 18:23
  • So you're claiming that any single word following a preposition is guaranteed to be its object? That rule produces *I'm puzzled by whom did it. See what I mean about it confusing even native speakers?
    – John Lawler
    Commented Nov 10, 2016 at 19:05

3 Answers 3

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You are completely correct, the book is wrong.

Whomsoever is defined as object case of whosoever:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/whomsoever?s=t

whosoever chose to visit him.

"Whosoever" is the subject of the verb "chose". "Whomsoever" is an object form, so it cannot take "whosoever"'s place.

My preferred form of the sentence is:

One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whoever chose to visit him.

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Your book is truly wrong; the correct answer is 'whosoever'.

I thought to expand on the other answer by answering the question: Why? ELU SE already features many posts which explain this difference, such as this, and so which obviates the need to explain it myself, but I will summarise the key notion:

[Source:] The case of 'whoever/whomever' is determined by its usage in the subordinate clause, not the case of the subordinate clause's usage in the sentence.

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"whosoever" is nominative case; it's like "he".
"whomsoever" is accusative case; like "him".

We can isolate the noun phrase:

One hour in the week was set aside by him for the reception of whomsoever chose to visit him.

Now we can replace the object of that noun phrase:

the reception of (he/him)

It should be clear that him is correct in this simplified version, so whomsoever is correct in the full version.

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