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E. F. Benson

E. F. Benson

  • Miss Elizabeth Mapp, magnificent grande dame and heiress, is always on the lookout lest her neighbors fall outside the bounds of perfect, exemplary manners. Opera glasses and notebook in hand, she gazes out her window, ever the vigilant sentinel. But her tightly controlled world is soon beset on all sides by interlopers, first in the disturbingly masculine form of two very different retired army officers—both of whom are anything but retiring in their conflicting aims upon her heart. Second, there appears the elegant, insidiously evil shape of a ravishing Contessa possessed of dazzling charm and diabolical designs. Can Mapp, super-strategist of the drawing room and experienced provocateur of amorous intrigue, overcome all obstacles and be united with the object of her matrimonial desires? Whom could she possibly choose: the solid, traditional Major Flint or the mysteriously attractive Captain Puffin?

    This wonderfully humrous satire of British high society introduces one of E. F. Benson's most beloved characters.

  • England between the wars was a paradise of calm and leisure for the very, very rich. Into this enclave is born Mrs. Emmeline Lucas—La Lucia, as she is known—a woman determined to lead a life quite different from the subdued formality of her class.

    With her cohort, Georgie Pillson, and her husband, Peppino, Lucia upends the greats of high society: the imperious Lady Ambermere and her equally imperious dog, Pug; the odious Piggy and Goosie Antrobus; the Christian Scientist Daisy Quantrock, with her penchant for the foreign; and all the rest of the small English town that the British rich call their country home. Beset on all sides by pretenders to her social throne, Lucia brings culture, fine art, excitement, and intrigue into this cloistered realm.

    Told with his usual dry British wit, E. F. Benson gives us the first tale in his classic Mapp and Lucia series.