E. F. BensonBesprekingen

This was very good. Very atmospheric. Felt like a ghost story. Kind of slow moving, of its time. Might be frustrating to folks that are used to quick paced page turners, but worth taking the time to enjoy. Certainly kept me engaged!

"Scrumptious" is a word I've probably never used in my life, but it seems rather apt for this series. E.F. Benson's delectable light comedy is a cross between Austen and Wodehouse, somehow more savage than either and yet more fond of the characters at the same time.

Queen Lucia introduces us to the immortal Emmeline Lucas, renowned for her dinner parties in which she will play the First Movement of the Moonlight Sonata, but will then beg off playing the second and third movements on the grounds that they are more "morning and afternoon" (*cough* she can't quite play them yet *cough). Lucia dominates life, along with her effete best friend Georgie, in their idyllic town of Riseholme, while Lucia in London takes the characters on the road for some urban satire. Miss Mapp, originally a separate novel entirely, shows us the life of the doughty, determined Elizabeth Mapp in the quirky, rather insular town of Tilling. Finally, in Mapp and Lucia, the two women are brought together, two generals in the field, each determined to have complete control of their terrain. Benson would eventually carry on this story in Trouble for Lucia and Lucia's Progress.

This joyous series is light and sparkling, but remains a fantastic break from reality 100 years after the first book was published. The last three novels were famously adapted in the 1980s with Prunella Scales, Nigel Hawthorne, and a career-best Geraldine McEwan in the lead roles. This led to McEwan and Scales releasing the books on tape, which are a real gem if you can find them. (Like Wodehouse, Benson's novels lend themselves to being read aloud.) The books were adapted again for a far shorter miniseries in the 2010s which was well cast but a little over-zealous in my opinion.

Since the 1980s adaptation brought the books back into the culture, several novelists have tried their hand at sequels. Tom Holt's two volumes are well worth reading, but the more recent trilogy by Guy Fraser-Sampson were, to my mind, a complete failure, utterly at odds with Benson's approach.

I was so glad to find this six-volume Folio Society edition from the 1990s, with the original six novels in beautiful cloth-bound hardcover, and elegant illustrations.

A lifelong treat for lovers of this sort of humour.

Dare I say to new readers not to commence with this, the eponymous and most famous novel of the series? Mapp and Lucia is still an amusing frolic, but I think it isn't quite as funny as the previous three, and additionally it rather assumes the reader's knowledge of the worlds of both Mapp and Lucia, who meet in this novel but have had full lives of their own in the previous ones. (Mostly in terms of character touches; the Padre, Daisy Quantock, and all of the minor characters are hilarious here if you know them already.)

Not to say you won't enjoy this, but commence with Queen Lucia or Miss Mapp and move through the series; it will be a much more satisfying experience.

Cliche though it may be, it is always a joy to revisit the pretentious, social-climbing, class-obsessed, bitingly funny world of the towns of Riseholme and Tilling. Queen Lucia, the first book in Benson's series, introduces us to part of this world - although the full glory of the series would not become apparent until the fourth novel, when Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas, demented heroine of this one, finally comes face to face with Elizabeth Mapp, determined heroine of the next.

For lovers of classic British comedies of manners, especially if you're seeking someone as laughter-inducing as Wodehouse yet more savage to the characters than he, and as carefully studied as Austen yet far less serious.

The 2014 TV adaptation, with Miranda Richardson, was pleasant enough although - to my mind - overdone. The 1980s adaptation with Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales is languid at times, but well worth seeking out for its picture-perfect portrayal of the novels.

The last of the original series of these novels, this is perhaps the least of them. And that's fair: Benson was in his 70s by the time this novel was published, and would die mere months later. Still, the world of Tilling is richly embroidered and there is plenty of fun to be had. Perhaps the laughs don't come every single line, and one almost feels like one is reading a light novel rather than a light comic novel, but fans will still delight in the madness. Just not a place to start for a newcomer.

Luckily we have numerous authors who have taken up the baton of this series since the 1980s - some wonderful, some less so - so that we are assured that Elizabeth, Georgie, Lucia, Diva, Irene and the gang will never truly leave us.

It is no wonder that, when E.F. Benson decided to further the adventures of his divine Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas, he brought her to the town of Tilling. For here, in the first (pre-Lucia) Tilling novel, everything is absurd and hilarious in equal measure. Indeed, Lucia so o'erwhelms the measure in the later books that it is worth settling in to Miss Mapp to recall how perfect Benson's comic creations are, from the doughty title character to "quaint" (read: queer) Irene, the entire town ready to burst into a frenzy over the hoarding of corned beef or the origin of a recipe for "red currant fool".

My comic ideal.

Comedic sublime. Very much reads like a sequel, actually, so I recommend reading Queen Lucia first, as the entire town's desperately relatable love-hate relationship with the title character really does build from there.

The Short Story is, of course, a genre in itself, and it's one I blow hot and cold on. On the one hand, I like the fact that I can read an entire story in a short time, and it doesn't require the same mental, and emotional commitment as the long form. On the other, I find them a bit clunky, and often quite unsatisfying.

I went through this collection in a couple of days, which is a measure of my enjoyment. That said, I found no real stand-out tales, and in fact there was at least one that would have done better to be left in obscurity. Nonetheless, they were largely enjoyable reads.

However, full disclosure: whether it's age, or some other factor, I have struggled for some years to find books (and films or TV) that give me the kind of chilling thrill one looks for in ghost stories, so it is highly likely that I am the problem! If you are more susceptible then this is probably a good collection of spine tinglers.

What I found most enthralling about this book is how it reflects the change in attitudes towards Paganism, Druidism, and the societies and cultures that gave us standing stones and stone circles. Even as recently as forty years ago, the entrenched Christian view 0f them as inherently evil is the foundation of every story within these covers. So much so that the publishers have printed a disclaimer in the front of the book.

It's all very 'Wicker Man'...

But don't let that put you off. If nothing else, it's nice to be reminded how far we have come.

Read by Georgina Sutton. Queen Lucia. Miss Mapp. Lucia in London.

A fictional supernatural short story set during Christmas, told from the pov of an upper class British man during the early 1900s. Did he dream or hallucinate the events, or did they really happen? Three stars for the story.

I listened to an audio version narrated by Tony Walker via his podcast 'Classic Ghost Stories.' Five stars for the narration.

3.5* rounded up for this audiobook edition.

It has been decades since I read the Mapp & Lucia series and I had forgotten much this entry (2nd in publication order but 3rd in the omnibus). I found Miss Mapp meaner than I remembered but the book funnier (so often the way in satires that the nastier characters are the source of most of the humor).

Nadia May does a marvellous narration so I am glad to have listened to this rather than read my Kindle edition.

4.5 stars

Nadia May does a marvelous narration of this satire of the social maneuvers in English village life during the 1920s. If you like Gaskell's Cranford, you will probably enjoy this.

August 2017 reread: 3.5* Lucia's social climbing in London wasn't as amusing as the reactions of the people in Riseholme. Lucia's ambitions and disregard of her husband made her less sympathetic than I found her in the first book, Queen Lucia. However she is back to her previous good form in the last few chapters so I look forward to reading the next book sometime soon.

A good end to the series - as the title says, Lucia runs into some trouble in Tilling & with Georgie Pillson but, ever indomitable, she rises to the crisis.

I thought that I had read the entire Mapp & Lucia series but nothing in this 5th entry in the series struck me as familiar. In any case, I continue to enjoy the rivalry between Miss Mapp (now Mrs. Mapp-Flint) and Lucia!

Three quite different books, none very successful. The first is mostly a series of conversations among a group of proto-Bright Young Things, with a twist ending. Dodo the Second has a bit of a plot, “of more than usually revolting sentimentality,” and a character very like Georgie in the Mapp and Lucia books, presumably a self-portrait of Benson. Dodo Wonders gives us a portrait of the Home Front in WW I, which had some inherent interest, but again Benson does not yet seem to have developed the art, so evident in the Mapp and Lucia books, of hanging social observation and witty dialogue on a diverting, if inconsequential storyline. The composer Ethel Smyth is entertainingly portrayed in all three books.

E.F. Benson (1867—1940) was the eccentric child of the Archbishop of Canterbury. A prolific writer, he’s most well known for the Mapp and Lucia series. In the literary constellation of British wit, he stands beside the likes of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse. (And, to a lesser degree, Saki and Jerome K. Jerome.) Full disclosure: I’ve read Waugh and Wodehouse, but not Saki or Jerome.

Waugh and Wodehouse satirized the Jazz Age, although both created works well into the Sixties, by that time producing novels and stories fossilized in nostalgia. Benson, meanwhile, creates an Edwardian menagerie of folly in The Freaks of Mayfair. Published in 1916 as the Great War raged in a mustard gas-choked abattoir, Freaks has a decidedly Edwardian ambiance. It celebrates an era that will soon be buried in the Somme and the trenches of Verdun.

Comedy can sometimes age poorly. But make no mistake, this isn’t some Anglo-Catholic glaucous idolatry like Brideshead Revisited. Freaks pokes fun at the eccentrics, oddballs, faddists, and climbers (both vertical and horizontal) of the Edwardian Era with a sharp eye and refined pen. The Hogarth Press edition I read has charming illustrations by George Plank. On the cover is Aunt Georgie engaged in his embroidery.

Aunt Georgie’s tale begins thus: “He was in fact an infant of the male sex according to physical equipment, but it became perfectly obvious even when he was quite a little boy that he was quite a little girl.” As a boy “he hated roughness and cold weather and mud, and his infant piety developed into a sort of sentimental rapture with stained-glass windows and ecclesiastical rites and church music.” Benson paints a portrait of a gender non-conformity and religious faith.

Aunt Georgie’s story still has relevance today, since “Occasionally, for no reason, he roused violent antagonism in the breasts of rude brainless men, and after he had left the smoking-room in the evening, one would sometimes say to another ‘Good God! What is it?’” More than one hundred years later, the world is still populated by rude brainless men hellbent of meddling in the lives of others with their sanctimonious hypocrisy and weak-ass frail masculinity. So often the butt of jokes and turned into the “sissy” caricature, Benson turns the tables and makes the effeminate, delicate, effete aesthete the subject of adulation.

Other eccentrics and oddballs populate Freaks, including a faddish curate. He showers his parishioners, the well-heeled types of Curzon Street and Park Lane, with such topics as “Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Fire Worship, Christian Science, and has even been known to find something totemistic, if not positively sacramental, in the practice of cannibalism.” Like the portrait of Aunt Georgie, the faddish preacher’s comic foibles are all in good fun, but this is par for the course for the son of an eccentric ecclesiarch.

Amid the picture gallery of weirdos, the normal can stand out. In the story, “The Sea-Green Incorruptible,” traces the biography of one Constance Lady Whittlemere. Her story is one of mundane ordinariness that sticks out like a sore thumb amid tales of effeminate aesthetes doing embroidery and preachers sermonizing about cannibalism and Christian Science. Every comedy needs a Ralph Bellamy character and Lady Whittlemere epitomizes a kind of idealized absolute of human dullness. Benson presents many colorful characters and Lady Whittlemere is the color beige. She’s the elevator music version of a Matchbox Twenty song. If variety is the spice of life, Lady Whittlemere is a rice cake.

The Freaks of Mayfair is a forgotten classic, not only because it is less well-known among E.F. Benson’s voluminous output, but also because his minor star has been sidelined by the likes of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse. Yet it is worth the time to read and enjoy. Amid the flaming shitshow that is modern living, a comic confection like The Freaks of Mayfair offers pleasant distraction and humane portraits of freaks, faddists, climbers, and fakers.

https://driftlessareareview.com/2023/01/21/forgotten-classics-the-freaks-of-mayf...

Emmeline Lucas, conocida universalmente por sus amigos como Lucía, reina de Riseholme, es una archiesnob del más alto nivel. Cuando en sus vacaciones alquila una casita junto al mar, cree que ya nadie podrá hacerle sombra, hasta que se cruza en su camino Miss Elizabeth Mapp, figura central de la vida social del pequeño villorrio de Tilling.
De cara al mundo, Lucía y Mapp son las mejores y más mundanas anfitrionas, pero en secreto no cejarán en su empeño, por muy bajo que puedan caer, por ganar la feroz batalla por la supremacía.

La señorita Mapp (a la que ya conocimos en la soberbia Mapp y Lucía) es una de las más excéntricas damas villanas de la comedia British. Reina y señora del pueblecito costero de Tilling, a cuyos habitantes maneja con mano de hierro en guante de terciopelo, la señorita Mapp es avara, intrigante y rencorosa, además de una cotilla de cuidado. Una mujer, en suma, tan fascinante y letal como una cobra. En Tilling someterá a padecimientos sin cuento a su círculo social: el mayor Benjamin Flint, obsesionado con el whisky y el golf, y con quien la señorita Mapp lleva años intentando casarse sin éxito; su secuaz, el capitán Puffin, un don nadie que se ahoga en un vaso de agua; el discreto señor Wyse, que mantendrá una relación no tan discreta con la pretenciosa Susan Poppit, miembro de la Orden del Imperio Británico y as del bridge; la desgraciada Godiva Plaistow o el «Padre», un sacerdote que está convencido de que habla en escocés.

Reina Lucía nos presenta a la inimitable Emmeline Lucas (Lucía para los amigos), árbitro social y reina del pintoresco villorrio de Riseholme, que ve su trono peligrar con la aparición de Olga Bracely, una cantante de ópera sin escrúpulos. Para hacerle frente, contará con el apoyo de su fiel amigo, Georgie Pillson, un zangolotino de la mejor calaña, aficionado al cotilleo salvaje, al petit point y a las conversaciones en italiano macarrónico; o con su molesta vecina, Daisy Quantock, que revoluciona al pueblo entero cuando adquiere un «gurú» nativo de la India aficionado a las bebidas espirituosas de alta graduación, que introduce en la comarca la fiebre por el Yoga.

More ruthless scheming and social climbing set in a small English town in the late 1920s. Lucia and Elizabeth's determined games of one-upmanship are bitter because the stakes are so low. E.F. Benson writes with a clear eye for the satirical possibilities of Tilling and its inhabitants, and there's much here that's very amusing, but perhaps without quite the bite of the previous installment in the series.½

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Mapp and Lucia series.

This appears to be one of those series that people either love or hate. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, E.F. Benson skewers the frivolous lives of the elite in rural English villages. The heroine is Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to all as Lucia (the Italian pronunciation, if you please). Lucia rules the village of Riseholme with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ruthlessly running the social lives of the others in her social class. Despite their occasional resentment and attempts to break free of Lucia's influence, the village invariably finds life gray and boring without their benevolent dictator in residence.

The second book in the series, Miss Mapp, at first appears to be a completely unrelated book, as Lucia does not appear and instead the main character is Elizabeth Mapp, a never-married woman "of a certain age" in the village of Tilling. Like Lucia, she rules her social class with a strong will, although with somewhat less grace than her counterpart in Riseholme. The third book, Lucia in London, leaves Mapp and Tilling behind and returns to focus on Lucia, this time on her adventures during the social season in London.

Finally, in Book Four (Mapp and Lucia), the irresistible force (Lucia) meets the immovable object (Mapp) when Lucia decides to move to Tilling. This town is not big enough for both of them to rule, and the schemes and shenanigans that ensue are delightfully sharp and witty. Their tussles continue in the final two books in the series, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia.

The lives of the people spotlighted in Riseholme and in Tilling are spectacularly shallow. The biggest intrigues involve who is paired with who at the evening bridge games, and gossip is traded freely during the morning marketing, when anyone who is anyone gathers on the High Street with their baskets and their cutting observations. Scarcely a reference is ever made to world wars or depressions, even though both raged throughout the time period of these books. To read such accounts written in a serious manner would be intolerably smug, but Benson's writing is slyly cutting, as he appears to take all of the plotting with the utmost sincerity even while winking at the reader with his asides.

Readers who prefer their heroes and heroines to be a bit less shallow and a bit more kind will find the Lucia series less than enjoyable, as will those readers neither old enough to remember the early 20th century nor with any interest in life among the middle class (being, in those days and in that country, truly in the middle between the poor and working classes on one end and the aristocracy on the other). Those who, like me, enjoy a sharp bite to their fiction will find themselves alternately rooting for the downfall of Mapp and Lucia and cheering their subsequent rise back to prominence.½

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Mapp and Lucia series.

This appears to be one of those series that people either love or hate. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, E.F. Benson skewers the frivolous lives of the elite in rural English villages. The heroine is Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to all as Lucia (the Italian pronunciation, if you please). Lucia rules the village of Riseholme with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ruthlessly running the social lives of the others in her social class. Despite their occasional resentment and attempts to break free of Lucia's influence, the village invariably finds life gray and boring without their benevolent dictator in residence.

The second book in the series, Miss Mapp, at first appears to be a completely unrelated book, as Lucia does not appear and instead the main character is Elizabeth Mapp, a never-married woman "of a certain age" in the village of Tilling. Like Lucia, she rules her social class with a strong will, although with somewhat less grace than her counterpart in Riseholme. The third book, Lucia in London, leaves Mapp and Tilling behind and returns to focus on Lucia, this time on her adventures during the social season in London.

Finally, in Book Four (Mapp and Lucia), the irresistible force (Lucia) meets the immovable object (Mapp) when Lucia decides to move to Tilling. This town is not big enough for both of them to rule, and the schemes and shenanigans that ensue are delightfully sharp and witty. Their tussles continue in the final two books in the series, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia.

The lives of the people spotlighted in Riseholme and in Tilling are spectacularly shallow. The biggest intrigues involve who is paired with who at the evening bridge games, and gossip is traded freely during the morning marketing, when anyone who is anyone gathers on the High Street with their baskets and their cutting observations. Scarcely a reference is ever made to world wars or depressions, even though both raged throughout the time period of these books. To read such accounts written in a serious manner would be intolerably smug, but Benson's writing is slyly cutting, as he appears to take all of the plotting with the utmost sincerity even while winking at the reader with his asides.

Readers who prefer their heroes and heroines to be a bit less shallow and a bit more kind will find the Lucia series less than enjoyable, as will those readers neither old enough to remember the early 20th century nor with any interest in life among the middle class (being, in those days and in that country, truly in the middle between the poor and working classes on one end and the aristocracy on the other). Those who, like me, enjoy a sharp bite to their fiction will find themselves alternately rooting for the downfall of Mapp and Lucia and cheering their subsequent rise back to prominence.

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Mapp and Lucia series.

This appears to be one of those series that people either love or hate. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, E.F. Benson skewers the frivolous lives of the elite in rural English villages. The heroine is Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to all as Lucia (the Italian pronunciation, if you please). Lucia rules the village of Riseholme with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ruthlessly running the social lives of the others in her social class. Despite their occasional resentment and attempts to break free of Lucia's influence, the village invariably finds life gray and boring without their benevolent dictator in residence.

The second book in the series, Miss Mapp, at first appears to be a completely unrelated book, as Lucia does not appear and instead the main character is Elizabeth Mapp, a never-married woman "of a certain age" in the village of Tilling. Like Lucia, she rules her social class with a strong will, although with somewhat less grace than her counterpart in Riseholme. The third book, Lucia in London, leaves Mapp and Tilling behind and returns to focus on Lucia, this time on her adventures during the social season in London.

Finally, in Book Four (Mapp and Lucia), the irresistible force (Lucia) meets the immovable object (Mapp) when Lucia decides to move to Tilling. This town is not big enough for both of them to rule, and the schemes and shenanigans that ensue are delightfully sharp and witty. Their tussles continue in the final two books in the series, Lucia's Progress and Trouble for Lucia.

The lives of the people spotlighted in Riseholme and in Tilling are spectacularly shallow. The biggest intrigues involve who is paired with who at the evening bridge games, and gossip is traded freely during the morning marketing, when anyone who is anyone gathers on the High Street with their baskets and their cutting observations. Scarcely a reference is ever made to world wars or depressions, even though both raged throughout the time period of these books. To read such accounts written in a serious manner would be intolerably smug, but Benson's writing is slyly cutting, as he appears to take all of the plotting with the utmost sincerity even while winking at the reader with his asides.

Readers who prefer their heroes and heroines to be a bit less shallow and a bit more kind will find the Lucia series less than enjoyable, as will those readers neither old enough to remember the early 20th century nor with any interest in life among the middle class (being, in those days and in that country, truly in the middle between the poor and working classes on one end and the aristocracy on the other). Those who, like me, enjoy a sharp bite to their fiction will find themselves alternately rooting for the downfall of Mapp and Lucia and cheering their subsequent rise back to prominence.

Los relatos reunidos en La habitación de la torre, 13 cuentos de fantasmas, de E.F. Benson, invitan a un inquietante recorrido por una extensa galería de espectros. El verdadero aficionado a los exquisitos placeres del miedo, aquel que vendería su alma al diablo por un buen cuento de terror no debe perdérselo: E.F. Benson le sorprenderá.