Complete Romance & Humor of E. F. Benson

Includes E. F. Benson's notable Mapp and Lucia series. Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and is also the name of a television series based on those novels.


The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and "one-upmanship" in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Several of them are set in the small seaside town of Tilling, closely based on Rye, East Sussex, where Benson lived for a number of years and (like Lucia) served as mayor. Lucia previously lived at Riseholme, based on Broadway, Worcestershire, from where she brought to Tilling her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. 


"Mallards", the home of Miss Mapp--and subsequently Lucia--was based on Lamb House in Rye. The house had previously been lived in by Henry James and had a garden room overlooking the street (unfortunately a German bomb destroyed the Garden Room in World War II. The rest of the house is now a National Trust property.) 

The novels, in chronological order, are: Queen Lucia (1920) Miss Mapp (1922) Lucia in London (1927) Mapp and Lucia (1931) Lucia's Progress (1935) (published in the U.S. as The Worshipful Lucia) Trouble for Lucia (1939) 

In this book, includes 30+ works of E. F. Benson: 

Across the Stream (1917) 

The Blotting Book (1908) 

The Countess of Lowndes Square (1920) 

Crescent and Iron Cross (1918) 

Daisy's Aunt (1910) 

David Blaize (1916) 

Michael (1916) 

Queen Lucia (1920) 

Miss Mapp (1922) 

Dodo Wonders (1920) 

Mammon and Co. (1899) 

Dodo's Daughter (1913) 

Scarlet and Hyssop (1902) 

The Rubicon (1894) 

Dodo, Volumes 1 and 2 (1893)

The Angel of Pain (1905)

The House of Defence, Complete (1907)

The Judgment Books (1895)

The Valkyries (1903)

The Relentless City (1903)

Arundel (1915)

The Vintage (1898)

Deutschland Über Allah

David Blaize and the Blue Door

Up and Down (1918)

Thorley Weir (1913)

The Capsina (1899)


Across the Stream- 

In this book Benson attacks spiritualism. 


The Countess of Lowndes Square- 

I have divided the stories that are here collected under one cover into various classes, so that such readers as want to compare their own experiments, let us say, in blackmailing or spiritualistic stances, with those of other students, may find such tales as deal with their own speciality in crime or superstition grouped together in separate sections of this book. They will thus be spared a skipping hunt through pages in which thev feel no personal interest. 


Crescent and Iron Cross- 

When the Young Turks came into power, they proclaimed that they were going to weld the Ottoman Empire into one homogeneous and harmonious whole. But by a piece of brilliant paradoxical resasoning, says Mr. Benson, German determined that it was she who was going to do it for them. 


David Blaize- 

David Blaize is the son of an archdeacon, the friend of a bishop's nephew, and this is a story of their friendship and life at a public school. Possibly the tale may be reminiscent of the author's own youth. It tells of cleanliness, physical and moral, of the self-restraint learned from one another by boys who were to be among the future leaders in England. 


Queen Lucia- 

Meet Emmeline Lucas, known to her friends as Lucia, the undisputed social leader of the town of Riseholme, and her husband Phillip, writer of prose poems. Risholme is also home to Georgie Pillson, who plays duets with Lucia and collects bibelots, Daisy Quantock, who has discovered an Indian Guru who will teach her meditation, Olga Bracely, the operatic soprano, and Signor Cortese composer of operas.