The Complete Works of E. F. Benson

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. He started his novel writing career in 1893 with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. He repeated the success of Dodo, with sequels to this novel, but the greatest success came relatively late in his career with The Mapp and Lucia series consisting of six novels and two short stories. The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique, and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories. Table of Contents: Make Way For Lucia: Queen Lucia Miss Mapp Lucia in London Mapp and Lucia Lucia's Progress or The Worshipful Lucia Trouble for Lucia The Male Impersonator Desirable Residences Novels: Dodo; A Detail of the Day Dodo's Daughter or Dodo the Second Dodo Wonders David Blaize David Blaize and the Blue Door David Blaize of King's The Rubicon The Judgement Books The Vintage Mammon and Co. Scarlet and Hyssop The Relentless City The Valkyries The Angel of Pain The House of Defence The Blotting Book Daisy's Aunt Mrs. Ames Thorley Weir Arundel Michael Up and Down Across the Stream Paying Guests Short Story Collections: The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories Visible and Invisible Spook Stories More Spook Stories Historical Works: Deutschland Über Allah Crescent and Iron Cross Charlotte Bronte