E. F. Benson’s beloved Mapp and Lucia novels are sparkling, classic comedies of manners set against the petty snobberies and competitive maneuverings of English village society in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Worshipful Lucia (1935; published in the UK as Lucia’s Progress) and Trouble for Lucia (1939) are the last two novels in Benson’s series. They chronicle the ongoing battles of his famous characters—Mrs. Lucia Lucas and Miss Elizabeth Mapp—in the idyllic seaside village of Tilling, which proves too small to contain both of them. While both are hypocritical snobs, Lucia is animated by marvelous delusions of grandeur and Mapp by insatiable curiosity and chronic rage; their epic collisions rock their small society and provide the narrative engines for Benson’s gloriously farcical masterpieces. “Benson’s Lucia novels . . . are camp, sly, poisonous, piquant, stinging, clever, and as delightful as a glass of sweet sherry taken on a sun-dappled lawn.” —The Telegraph (UK)
 
“Entirely delightful. . . . Superbly ridiculous. . . . Benson constructs a comedy that is as exquisite, in its way, as anything in English humorous literature.” —Auberon Waugh, The New York Times
 
“These magic books . . . are as fresh as paint. The characters are real and therefore timeless.” —Nancy Mitford, The Times (London)

“Benson’s cult novels are wicked, funny masterpieces—and thoroughly addictive. . . . Lucia, Georgie and Mapp are three of the very greatest characters in English fiction, and with them you can never go wrong.” —Edward Gorey, Vogue