One of my favorite series of all times, perhaps the absolute favorite. I read it every year, in the bathtub, and my copies are a wrinkled mess. I love the characters in this book and the look into life how it was imagined to be (and maybe was) between the Wars for the well to do with no reason to earn a living. Life was a series of tea parties, bridge parties, garden parties (sometimes), church, etc. And don't forget the daily trip to the market.This particular volume concerns the relationship b...

I'm midway through the series, and I'm totally hooked! It's hard to explain why the conniving social sparring amongst snobbish pretentious idle rich Brits in the '20s & '30s is so fascinating— but I've always enjoyed a Jeeves & Wooster romp. This is how Bertie's Aunt Agatha lives.

Like reading a camp, bitchy version of Wodehouse in which every single character is a frightful, parochial snob. Delightful.

Still hold up as a favorite, got me through surgery and a hospital stay...;-)

Darlings, you simply must join us for...AN ELIZABETHAN FÊTE AT TILLING VILLAGE!And by "fête" we mean slaughter, darlings! Indeed, things shall get bloody, or at the very least, quite tense. Lips will be curled and stares will be cold and words will be delivered with a certain sardonic disdain - or perhaps a bright, cheerful condescension. Such things are par per il corso when it is Queen versus Queen!Which Queen shall triumph? Shall it be the formidable Queen Elizabeth Mapp? She does have the ho...

I have always liked the Britcom "Keeping Up Appearances". But it is a constant distraction to wonder why no one has ever murdered Hyacinth Bucket ("It's boo-KAY!"). She's amusing, but mostly because she is surrounded by family and … friends who recognize the fact that she's unchangeably outrageous, and they're stuck with her. (Unless they kill her, and since it's a sitcom they never do.) These other characters, the neighbors and her sisters and their families, and of course her poor bedeviled hu...

The Lucia series should be read by anyone who is a fan of Jane Austen or Angela Thirkell!Nov/Dec 2017 reread: I think that this is my favorite in the series. It would perhaps not be as funny to someone who hadn't read the previous books but the ongoing manoevers between Lucia & Elizabeth Mapp in order to gain social ascendency in the village of Tilling are hilarious as are the reactions of the villagers.

Battle of the titans! This is probably my favorite book in the Mapp and Lucia series. When Lucia moves in to Mapp's "territory," sparks are bound to fly -- and they do, spectacularly, but of course overlaid with a layer of civility that masks true feeling. Benson is better at dissecting (to hilarious effect) the petty jealousies and need for societal approval that drive us all. He does it in a way that leaves no doubt that he's fonder of people with these flaws than those with aspirations to be

I expected a little more from this book, but that's not to say I didn't like it. These books are really well known and loved, but I'm totally new to them. (Reminds me of a friend who as a child thought she had discovered a very unknown and small band called "The Beatles" of which she must be one of a few elite fans).It centers around Emmeline Lucas (Lucia) and Elizabeth Mapp. Lucia is new in town and Mapp can't stand for her to become the center of social life in small town Tilling. These two la...

A charming, witty novel from 1935. Lucia, a beautiful young widow, moves to a Sussex village long dominated by the spinster Miss Mapp; their battle for social supremacy pulsates with refined vindictiveness that—no shame here—delighted me, several times to the point of squealing aloud. Amid the hilarity, I thought differently and deeply about things like nicknaming, pet expressions and "home". I loved this a thousand times more than expected.

Delightful; amusing; gentle comedy of manners: while accurate descriptors of Mapp and Lucia, these words also make it sound twee and, perhaps, dated, which is far from the truth. Gossipy, waspish and, at times, malignant are also accurate, and go more to the heart of the humour.Elizabeth Mapp hates Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas with a passion; Lucia despises and pities Mapp in equal measure. Each scheming and plotting to be the centre of their social circle, their machinations against each other must a...

Meh. No stakes, no characters to love/love to hate, and only moderate joke quality and density. In theory, this has my name written all over it, but turned out to be kind of a slog.

I love the Lucia series so much that I only permit myself to read one book from it a year. I have two left after this one, and then I suppose I will start over again. If you're a fan of Cranston, Barbara Pym or Nancy Mitford, the Lucia series is like finding pure gold. If Dowager Violet Crawley is up your alley, then please help yourself to these books. Set in the English proper countryside mid-wars, Lucia aims to be the queen of every world she enters, aided and abetted by her "confirmed bachel...

The fourth of the Mapp and Lucia series and the book in which the two ladies first cross swords (we are told that they have met earlier, when Miss Mapp visited and stayed a short while in Riseholme, and from where, we learn some of her contributions to Tilling society like ‘Au Reservoir’ actually came).Anyway, the book opens in Riseholme where we find that Peppino has died and Lucia has been in mourning for nearly a year. Meanwhile preparations are on for the village fete, an idea proposed and p...

"Miss Mapp had long been considered, by others as well as herself, the first social citizen of Tilling, and though she had often been obliged to fight desperately for her position, and had suffered from time to time manifold reverses, she had managed to maintain it, because there was no one else of so commanding and unscrupulous a character. Then this alien from Riseholme had appeared and had not so much challenged her as just taken her scepter and her crown..."I am so sad this book is finis

This is one of the funniest and most delightful books I have ever read. We all know people who make martyrs of themselves, and Lucia is the prime example. Always scheming and quite determined to be top of the pile, she loves to blame others for inflicting all the hard work on her. "How you all work me so!" If she's not starring in a play, she's running for some political position. If she's not hosting a lofty aristocrat, she's opening an art gallery. Lucia will stop at nothing to be the most imp...

I don’t write reviews. When worlds collide indeed!!! Lucia is about to step back into community life (sorry... royal court life) in Riseholme, after a year in mourning after the death of her husband. A slight, both real and perceived, convinced her to hide away from an upcoming Elizabethan fete (She was offered, not the role of the Virgin Queen, but Francis Drake’s wife!! The horror!), by taking up residence where else, of course, but at Miss Mapp’s homestead of Mallards in Tilling. Georgie and

Shame on me... for only discovering this book because of a BBC mini-series. How did I never hear of this 20th century classic? Every bit as witty and nuanced as my favourite classics, this is readable, relatable and a read to relish (to continue the alliteration). A comedy of manners, of gossip and of one-up-womanship, it concerns a small English village in the 1930s and its residents. And a new addition to the town who stirs up interest and tension as her rivalry with the current social Queen i...

Perhaps my favorite series of all that I try to reread once a year. Endlessly hilarious and engrossing, even though all the jokes are frequently repeated (however, they become exponentially funnier each time they pop up) and nothing much happens. But because everyone in the book finds the minutia of their everyday (wealthy and rather pampered) existence so fascinating, it becomes of immense import to the reader as well. I remember how upset I originally was when Lucia and Georgie left Riseholme

I liked Lucia, exasperating and conceited as she was, in her own books. I liked Elizabeth Mapp,choleric and impossible,in her own book. But when E F Benson brought his two battle-axes together, he created an enduring delight which for me will never fade. He might be a bit of a marmite writer but when you do love him, you're a fan forever. He only wrote 6 books, but when my original anthology fell apart from re-reading I bought the whole set on Kindle. Like so many of my favourites, they are old,...