Miss Mapp (Unabridged‪)‬

An arch-schemer, gossip, and insatiably curious social climber, Miss Elizabeth Mapp is a 40-something spinster living in the picturesque English seaside town of Tilling. Miss Mapp and her nemesis, Godiva Plaistow vie for sartorial and social status much to the amusement of the gentlemen of Tilling - particularly Major Flint and his friend Captain Puffin. 

A contemporary review in The Bookman stated, "Mr. Benson has made a narrative out of what are usually regarded as the trimmings of a novel, the small circumstances, the everyday conversations, the hourly happenings of ordinary people.... It is surprising how quickly Miss Mapp's curiosity about her neighbours becomes our own."

Asking whether the book merely narrates storms in tea-cups, the review concludes, "Mr. Benson is at liberty to reply that while we are among the tea-cups of Tilling the storm is very real."

Miss Mapp is the second in the Mapp and Lucia series by E. F. Benson and was first published in 1922.