Mapp and Lucia - Hardcover

Mrs. Emmeline Lucas (Lucia to her friends) is the recently-widowed newcomer to the village of Tilling, eager to wrest the reins of social supremacy from the incumbent Miss Elizabeth Mapp and to install herself as its benevolent dictator. In their polite acts of sabotage, as they ruthlessly jockey for the position of cultural arbiter, Mapp and Lucia tear up the conventions of drawing-room diplomacy and enter a protracted conflict using fêtes, garden parties, musical soirées, and bridge evenings as their deadly weapons. Things finally come to a head with Miss Mapp¹s audacious attempt to steal her rival¹s celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. With a charming satirical bent, E.F. Benson turns the pretensions and snobberies of English village life into a deliciously wicked comedy. E.F. Benson (1867­1940) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a member of a distinguished and eccentric family. He wrote more than 100 books but is best remembered for his Lucia novels, written between 1920 and 1939.

Edward Francis Benson was born in 1867 and educated at King's College, Cambridge. Mayor of Rye from 1934 to 1937, Benson was awarded the O.B.E. and made an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. E. F. Benson died in 1940.