Books with author E. F Benson

[Read by Nadia May -aka- Wanda McCaddon] Told with his usual dry British wit, E. F. Benson gives us the first tale in his classic 'Mapp and Lucia' series. 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.

A must read for any fan of Benson's hugely popular 'Mapp and Lucia' series. Here we find ourselves in the small village of Riseholme, where all the rich have to do is gossip and vie for the position of supreme hostess. This is classic E. F. Benson dealing with the petty concerns of petty people, using his natural wit and humour. This novel, originally published in 1912, is being republished here together with a new introductory biography of the author.Edward Frederic Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer.

There you are, then, Francis, he said; "and I take it from you that that will put you perfectly square again. You've got to write to me, remember, in two days' time, saying that you have paid those bills. And for the rest, I'm delighted that you told me about it. In fact, I should have been rather hurt if you hadn't." "Mike, you're a brick," he said. "But then you always are a brick. Thanks awfully." "But it's more blessed to give than to receive, Francis," he said. "I have the best of you there." "Well, it's pretty blessed to receive when you are in a tight place, as I was," he said, laughing. "And I am so grateful

In a series of hilariously dry fictional sketches, E F Benson introduces us to some of the more bizarre inhabitants of Mayfair's Edwardian high society - a world he knew intinately. Each is a distinct representative of an anthropological 'type': Sir Louis and Lady Mary Marigold turn snobbery into an art form; 'Aunt' George is a bachelor with a passion for embroidery; Mrs Weston, a devotee of every new health-cult and spiritual fad; Horace Campbell, the jealous and poisonous society gossip; the socalled 'grizzly kittens' Babs Begum and Charlie Gordon, refuse to grow old gracefully; Mrs Sarah Whitehand is the social-climbing wife of an American toilet-bowl magnate; and Mr Sandow, the socialite vicar who seems interested in everything but real spirituality. These and a number of other intriguing specimens, all greedily jockeying for social standing in this most exclusive of societies, are impaled, Iabelled and preserved for our entertainment on the razor-sharp scalpel of Benson's savage wit.

In a series of hilariously dry fictional sketches, E F Benson introduces us to some of the more bizarre inhabitants of Mayfair's Edwardian high society - a world he knew intinately. Each is a distinct representative of an anthropological 'type': Sir Louis and Lady Mary Marigold turn snobbery into an art form; 'Aunt' George is a bachelor with a passion for embroidery; Mrs Weston, a devotee of every new health-cult and spiritual fad; Horace Campbell, the jealous and poisonous society gossip. These and a number of other intriguing specimens, all greedily jockeying for social standing in this most exclusive of societies, are impaled, Iabelled and preserved for our entertainment on the razor-sharp scalpel of Benson's savage wit.

"From the PREFACE.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 specialty in crime or superstition grouped together in separate sections of this book. They will thus be spared a skipping hunt through pages in which they feel no personal interest.In the same way, such readers as are in search merely of the lighter (though not more decorative) aspects of life, will be able to avoid like poison so innocent-looking a title as ""The Countess of Lowndes Square,"" for assuredly they would not find therein the fashionable descriptions of high life which they might reasonably anticipate, but would merely cast the book from them in disgust, when they discovered that one who had been the wife of an Earl, and ought therefore to have known ever so much better, belonged to the most contemptible of the criminal classes. The table of contents, in like manner, conducts the crank and the cat-lover to the pastures where he is most likely to find a digestible snack.The short story is not a lyre on which English writers thrum with the firm delicacy of the French, or with the industry of the American author. If the ten best short stories in the world were proclaimed by popular vote, it is probable that they would all be French stories; while if the million worst stories in the world were similarly brought together into one unspeakable library, they would probably all of them - with the exception, of course, of the fourteen that make up this volume - be found to be written in America. There is something in the precision and economy of the French, something in the opulence and amateurishness of the United States that renders the result of such a plebiscite perfectly appropriate, and we should only, when the result of the poll was known, find in it another instance of the invariable occurrence of the expected.Most of the ensuing tales have appeared before in the pages of Nash's Weekly, The Windsor Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Century, and The Woman at Home. The rest are now published for the first time."

A must read for any fan of Benson's hugely popular 'Mapp and Lucia' series. Here we find ourselves in the small village of Riseholme, where all the rich have to do is gossip and vie for the position of supreme hostess. This is classic E. F. Benson dealing with the petty concerns of petty people, using his natural wit and humour. This novel, originally published in 1912, is being republished here together with a new introductory biography of the author.

Excerpt from Mrs. AmesTongue) was not the result of her exertions. It was habitually there, and though that and the restlessness of her dark and rather beady eyes might have made a doctor, on a cursory glance (especially if influenza was about), think that she suffered from some slight rise of temperature, he would have been in error. Her symptoms betokened not an unnatural warmth of the blood, but were the visible sign of her eager and slightly impatient mind. Like the inhabitants of ancient Athens, she was always on the alert to hear some new thing (though she disliked gossip), but her mind appreciated the infinitesimal more than the important. The smaller a piece of news was, the more vivid was her perception of it, and the firmer her grip of it: large questions produced but a vague impression on her.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.