Books with author E. F. Benson

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.

British novelist, brother of A. C. and R. H. Benson, born at Wellington College, Berkshire, educated at King's College, Cambridge and the British School of Archaeology in Athens. His successful first novel, Dodo (1893), was followed by a stream of novels, biographies, and reminiscences. He is most famous for the series of comic novels he published during the 1920s and 1930s, the ‘Mapp and Lucia’ books, which satirize provincial life in the small coastal town of Tilling (Rye) and which contain, in the characters of Lucia, grande dame of Tilling, and her rival, Miss Mapp, two of the most endearing comic types in British fiction.

[MP3CD audiobook format in Vinyl case.] [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.

Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and also the name for two British television adaptations 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.

July morning Mrs Lucas preferred to cover the half-mile that lay between the station and her house on her own brisk feet, and sent on her maid and her luggage in the fly that her husband had ordered to meet her. After those four hours in the train a short walk would be pleasant, but, though she veiled it from her conscious mind, another motive, subconsciously engineered, prompted her action. It would, of course, be universally known to all her friends in Riseholme that she was arriving today by the 12.26, and at that hour the village street would be sure to be full of them. They would see the fly with luggage draw up at the door of The Hurst, and nobody except her maid would get out. That would be an interesting thing for them: it would cause one of those little thrills of pleasant excitement and conjectural exercise which supplied Riseholme with its emotional daily bread.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at

Excerpt from The TortoiseEdward Heaton found himself so much in accord with the sour psychologist that as he finished dress ing he made some excellent resolutions, such as he often did when he looked cheerft forth on the morning of another day, and this rather unpleasant reminder in the fact that he was indubitably forty put an edge on to the steel with which he prepared to carve himself into the immediate future. He told himself that, though he felt young enough (and in matter of physical and artistic vigour was young enough), it was certainly time to give visible token of the reality of his powers, and set to work without delay. There, below his bedroom window, was the roof of his arena, the studio in which he had so many delightful little gatherings, which grouped them selves round different sketches of his, in each of which, when he began it, he divined a potential masterpiece. There they stood, some slightly dirty, some even a little faded, some still not yet quite dry.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.