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The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994

Description: Another beautiful set from the Folio Society! From an appreciation by Andrew Nixon in Slightly Foxed (https://foxedquarterly.com/mapp-and-lucia-literary-review/) that will have everyone queuing up to read to your lovely new set! E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books ruined Beethoven for me, and very nearly Shakespeare too. Picture, if you will, the most appallingly pretentious person in the world: a well-dressed middle-aged lady at the piano, plonking her way through the slow first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. She is wearing her ‘well-known Beethoven expression’ with the ‘wistfully sad far away look from which the last chord would recall her’. Her guests, enduring the entertainment in various attitudes of suicidal boredom, give dutiful little sighs as that last chord fades, and then steel themselves for . . . another rendition of the slow first movement of the Moonlight Sonata! For – though she pretends otherwise and that Beethoven composed the trickier second movement largely by mistake – it is in fact the only tune she can play. This is Emmeline Lucas, aka ‘Lucia’, and I’ve not been able to enjoy the Beethoven sonata since meeting her. The Italian affectation of ‘Lucia’ is just that, since she has no connection with Italy and certainly doesn’t speak the language. But by peppering her conversation with plenty of mio caros and molto benes she permits it to be thought that she is quite fluent in la bella lingua. I’m afraid it gets worse. The bedrooms in Lucia’s house have names like ‘Othello’ and ‘Hamlet’. In the garden there is ‘not a flower to be found save such as were mentioned in the plays of Shakespeare’. And the flowerbed beneath the dining-room window is known as ‘Ophelia’s border’. In Queen Lucia (1920) this stellar snob lords it over the village of Riseholme, oppressing local society with her profound appreciation of Shakespeare, her merciless Moonlights, her smattering of Italian and her unrelenting energy. Then in Lucia in London (1927) she deploys these same weapons to conquer the capital. Yes, Lucia is a ruthless social climber, a backstabber and a perfectly shameless pseud. But the funny thing is that, through the series of novels that follow, we the readers are generally on her side. And that’s because a little distance away, in a picturesque East Sussex town, there lurks somebody far, far worse . . . * ‘Elizabeth was gazing out of the window with that kind, meditative smile which so often betokened some atrocious train of thought.’ From the garden room of Mallards, her ancestral home, the eponymous anti-heroine of Miss Mapp (1922) plots against her friends and neighbours. The garden room is important: it is a strategic vantage point affording clear views down the two principal streets of the town of Tilling, so she can chart all comings and goings in comfort. Tilling is a lovely, chocolate-box sort of place, with cobbled streets and characterful houses inhabited by the archetypes of the interwar leisured class: vicar’s wives, ageing spinsters, retired colonels. It is Elizabeth Mapp’s great purpose to devise new and ingenious ways to make their daily lives slightly less pleasant than they would otherwise be, and to ensure that the round of garden parties and bridge evenings that is Tilling’s social scene remains a hissing snake pit of envy and resentment. The chief weapons in her armoury are thinly veiled sarcasm and cutting criticisms disguised as compliments. True, she is not the only culprit in the town’s never-ending social war. The women of Tilling have, as one male character ruefully puts it, ‘a pretty sharp eye for each other’s little failings’ (though the men are just as bad). But Mapp is by far the most ruthless and skilled operator. Hers are ‘the most penetrating shafts, the most stinging pleasantries’, and thus she is feared and admired by all. Large and toothy, her face is ‘corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity’. She terrifies local shopkeepers and tradesmen with continual niggling disagreements: Quarrelsome errands were meat and drink to Miss Mapp: Tuesday morning, the day on which she paid and disputed her weekly bills, was as enjoyable as Sunday mornings when, sitting close under the pulpit, she noted the glaring inconsistencies and grammatical errors [in the sermon]. In short, she is a master of what we might now call ‘passive-aggressive’ behaviour: never quite saying anything unambiguously insulting, but still making sure that everyone in the room feels jolly uncomfortable. Like Lucia, Mapp is a first-rate monster, vivid and fully realized. Had their creator, E. F. Benson, left off at Miss Mapp, he might still have earned a respectable middling position in the pantheon of English observational comedies. But, fortunately, he hit upon the one indisputably great idea of his career, which was to elevate him to the top rank and preserve his name for posterity: he brought his two monsters together. If you are a first-time reader of E. F. Benson, I urge you to start with Miss Mapp and the two ‘solo’ Lucia novels and work your way towards Mapp and Lucia (1931), rather than diving straight into the most famous volume in the series. The steadily growing prospect of these two titanic female egos meeting each other is quite thrilling, and conjures thoughts of unstoppable forces and immovable objects. The wheeze Benson cooks up is that Lucia – newly widowed but with her chaste companion Georgie in tow – comes to Tilling to rent Elizabeth Mapp’s house for the summer. The latter doesn’t leave town: an eccentric local tradition sees the residents all holidaying in each other’s homes, meaning that Mapp is ever available to ‘pop in’ with helpful advice, to keep an eye on how her beloved Mallards is being mistreated, and generally to try to ‘run’ Lucia in the Tilling social scene. Alas, she soon finds that her tenant is not the sort of person who can easily be run. (‘I see I must be a little firm with her,’ thought Lucia, ‘and when I’ve taught her her place, then it will be time to be kind.’) Worse, Lucia emerges as a clear threat to Mapp’s position as dictator of Tilling. She trumps Mapp’s teas with dinner parties, turns her own Mallards against her by hosting lavish garden parties and beats the locals into submission with the Moonlight. Hostilities commence early and escalate rapidly. Mapp fires her most stinging pleasantries; Lucia combats them with retorts of ‘paralysing politeness’. Before long they are locked in a deadly war of attrition with first one then the other gaining the upper hand. The war doesn’t let up through the rest of the novel or the sequels, Lucia’s Progress (1935) and Trouble for Lucia (1939). These three books are masterpieces of social satire and a joy to read. They’re vicious and gripping and wickedly funny, and they remain so after repeated rereading. They’re also about as deep as a puddle... ES4/8vv2

Price: 144.99 USD

Location: Tucson, Arizona

End Time: 2024-11-23T19:05:57.000Z

Shipping Cost: 9.88 USD

Product Images

The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994The Mapp and Lucia Novels, E.F. Benson, Folio Society, 1994

Item Specifics

Return shipping will be paid by: Seller

All returns accepted: Returns Accepted

Item must be returned within: 30 Days

Refund will be given as: Money Back

Binding: Cloth

Place of Publication: London

Language: English

Illustrator: Natacha Ledwidge

Special Attributes: Slipcase, Illustrated

Author: E.F. Benson

Publisher: Folio Society

Topic: Literature

Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom

Subject: Literature & Fiction

Character Family: Mapp and Lucia

Year Printed: 1994

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