mILDLY AMUSING BUT WHAT GHASTLY PEOPLE.

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.

Rhythm returns to Riseholme.

A delightful listen to a delightful social comedy written in 1927. Happily, Naxos recently released all six Mapp and Lucia novels, unabridged.

Just found Volume 2 - had all the others but determined to read them in order. In this one, the queen bee of a small southern English country town inherits some money and attempts to take London by storm in a tour de force of overt social climbing that earns her a society of Luciaphils, enthusiastic admirers of her naked audacity. In the course of contrasting city and country life, satirizing popular culture of the 1920s, as well as the encroachment of modernism on traditional aesthetics, a numb...

Thoroughly entertaining, with some wonderful character studies. Such great fun.

When contemporary fiction fails me, and I am searching for something to read, the road inevitably leads back to E. F. Benson's Lucia novels.And, Lucia in London is one of my favorites.I have probably read the book five or six times and it never fails to amuse and entertain me, but since moving to a small town I think I appreciate it even more.Lucia has enjoyed life at the center of her small-town social circle for years. A generous inheritance enables her to live in luxury in one of London's nic...

Camp world where the most "Tarsome" eventuality that has to be contended with is having to run your own bath when your maid has been given the afternoon off.

The series of 'Mapp and Lucia' novels written by EF Benson are, for me, the funniest books in the English language. Yes, they really are that good. I accept that they are very much an acquired taste. By no means everyone will enjoy these gentle, kindly satires that poke fun at the lives of the financially independent upper middle classes of provincial England in the 1930s. The principal character throughout the series is Emmeline Lucas, aka 'Lucia'. Lucia is a pretentious, snobbish and domineeri...

“Mrs Alingsby was tall and weird and intense, dressed rather like a bird-of-paradise that had been out in a high gale.” Marvellous.

There are some authors whose works are so delicious to me that I dole them out slowly, so that I do not gorge myself on their riches. The Lucia and Mapp novels of E. F. Benson are one such series of books. Thus far, I have read only the first two novels in the series, Queen Lucia and Lucia in London. Both were priceless.Lucia is Mrs. Philip Lucas of Riseholme, a rural community in the South of England which she dominates like Queen Victoria dominated her court. It is the 1920s that Evelyn Waugh

Another fun romp with Lucia, Georgie, and Daisy! A Ouija board that goes by the name Abfou, a small-town museum whose biggest exhibit are a pair of mittens worn by Queen Charlotte, and now a home in London, where Lucia continues to ineptly climb the social ladder, this book is the second in the Mapp and Lucia series and was just as much fun as the first. And I have four more to go! I'm a stickler for making the edition I have read to be my book photo, but for some reason they didn't have the edi...

Emmeline Lucas is a snob of the first order. And so hilariously affected. How affected? She insists that all of her friends and acquaintances call her "Lucia," with the Italian pronunciation, and invariably refers to her husband Philip as "Pepino." (The joke, of course, is that Lucia's Italian is so bad that she doesn't realize that it's spelled Peppino, and that it's a nickname for Giuseppe -- that is, Joseph. Philip would be Filippo, and the nickname would be Pippo.) At first, I was simply inf...

3.5 starsLucia is back to her ways again in this installment of the Lucia series; I have to say that I like this better than the first book.Peppino (Lucia's husband) has just inherited a house in London and some income from an aunt. It doesn't take long until Lucia is working her way up the social ladder in London while the residents of Riseholme are reading about Lucia's activities in the social column of the newspaper. No doubt about it, Lucia is a brilliant climber, but Riseholme is irked and...

This is the third volume in E.F. Benson’s wonderful series of comedic stories about snobbery and one-upmanship in post-WWI England. This review contains very minor spoilers.In this book Lucia receives a large inheritance, which includes a very nice house in London. Lucia is forced, though you would never know it, to renounce her hatred of London, which she always said was boring compared with her ‘beloved Riseholme’. Lucia throws herself into the London social scene, securing introductions to an...

Lucia does London: clever chap, that Benson. Recognising the limitations of a provincial milieu, he partially transplants his most shameless creation to London where she can run amuck in society whilst retaining one foot in the other camp [sic] of Riseholme. The touch is surer, defter than in Queen Lucia as there are infinitely more foils for the Lynda Snell of her day's pretension, condescension and scheming, though when she trips, it's further - and funnier - to fall. Ouija boards, pretend aff...

Darlings, you simply must visit London! The charmed village of Riseholme may be a country seat of unsurpassed delicacy and dignity when compared to the stridently au courant London Town of the 1920s... but with Riseholme's very own Queen Lucia spending her summer season at 25 Brompton Square, that notorious city of faddish layabouts has at last been given a sheen of class and taste. However temporarily that may be! For despite her quick accumulation of Lords and Duchesses and Rich London Eccentr...

I don’t write reviews. Lucia, having inherited property in Brompton Square, tries her hand in London’s modern world of social climbers. She decides to split her time between Brompton and Riseholme thinking she can reign supreme in both worlds. Is such a thing possible? How will her long-time friends and loyal subjects of Riseholme accept this insulting treatment?The stories of her rise in the quirky world of artists and pugilists and duchesses in London are far more charming than you’d think. Su...

This is definitely my favorite of the Lucia series thus far. An aunt of Lucia’s husband dies, leaving a “modest” fortune of what today would be about £175,000 not counting the freehold on 25 Brompton Square, which according to Zoopla, would be worth about £10M, or the antique furnishings therein. That’s a little better than modest, IMO. (By the way, E.F. Benson himself owned 25 Brompton Square, and attached to the house is a Blue Plaque honoring him. You can see it on Google maps.)Anyway, Lucia