The Mapp and Lucia series

Fiction ~ six novels, two short stories
Published 1920-39

Benson's Mapp and Lucia series consists of six novels and two short stories:
(1) Queen Lucia (1920; Lucia only)
(2) Miss Mapp (1922; Mapp only)
(3) Lucia in London (1927; Lucia only)
(4) The Male Impersonator (1929; Mapp only)
(5) Desirable Residences (1929; Mapp only)
(6) Mapp and Lucia (1931; both)
(7) Lucia's Progress (1935; both; known as The Worshipful Lucia in the USA)
(8) Trouble for Lucia (1939; both)

There are, of course, whole herds of proto-Lucias and pseudo-Mapps, not to mention Lucias-in-waiting, Mapps manquées, mini-Georgies, the odd Major Benjy, beefy parlourmaids with their lesbianic mistresses, snobs, cats, bitches, pseuds, prudes ... and umpteen stories (some comic, some spooky) set in Tilling, Tillingham, etc. etc. scattered throughout the works of E. F. Benson from 1893-1940.
I've read the whole lot of them umpteen times and the comedy never palls for me.

Daily Training

Non-fiction ~ sports/health
Published 1902
Benson edited with his friend Eustace H Miles

THE CRITICS

The title of this book, which belongs to the "Imperial Athletic Library," indicates its purpose. It is intended to give rules, rules always founded on principles, not for preparation for feats of strength, but for general well-being of body. It is a treatise on "daily" training, not the special cultivation of an abnormal strength, a cultivation which may be easily overdone and end in collapse, but of the general cultivation of a good physical habit. Diet is, of course, one of the main points. Our authors are strongly disposed to a modified vegetarianism; then there are exercises, for which very detailed instructions are given, and some admirably sound advice on morals. Altogether this is a book which any one may read with profit.

~The Spectator, 22/11/1902

With commendable simplicity and reasonableness, suggestions and directions are here set down concerning such exercises and general regimen as may contribute to the acquisition or preservation of health. Rules are based on the experience and observation of both authors, one of whom is a vegetarian, the other a meat-eater; one takes regular, the other sporadic, outdoor exercise; one a hot, the other a cold, bath; one uses tobacco, the other abjures it. They claim to be in harmony on fundamentals, and their advice is doubtless the more acceptable and effective because of their differences in practice. Argument for physical culture goes deeper than the simple invigoration of the body: "There is no healthful habit of body which does not exercise healthful influence on the soul," say they.

~The Outlook, 21/03/1903

The King and His Reign III: Ireland

Non-fiction ~ article
Published in The Spectator, 8th March 1935

The third of EFB's articles written to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V isn't available online, for some mysterious reason.

King Edward VII

Non-fiction ~ biography/royalty
Published 29th June 1933
Approx. 86,000 words

THE CRITICS

Mr. E. F. Benson's literary activities are more than admirable, they are amazing, and his agile pen has perhaps never been more happily, or more usefully, employed than in drawing for us his "speaking" likeness of the Monarch who, in nine short years, stamped himself indelibly on English and European, history. Mr. Benson's admiration for Edward VII is born of intimate knowledge of that King's character and career; he gives many a subtle story, many an important sidelight, many a stinging detail not to be found in Mr. Sidney Lee's 1,600 closely written pages, the avoirdupois of which may have been a little discouraging to the general reader. [...]

Mr. Benson has shown Edward VII to be intensely human, prone to the faults from which his father was free but possessing merits wholly beyond the outlook of that virtuous Prince. Generous no less than just, King Edward will go down to posterity as a most dignified, and withal most lovable, personage, and posterity will do well to hang up on their walls the faithful, if highly coloured, portrait due to Mr. Benson's skill. It is no figure of speech to suggest that unless the first output of King Edward the Seventh is of unusual dimensions, successive editions will rapidly follow, and it is therefore not ungracious to point to one error. Lord Kitchener waited on King Edward when King Edward's end was near, not to tender his resignation as Commander-in-Chief in India, but to receive absolution from the promise he had been coerced to make with regard to assuming the unnecessary and unsatisfactory Mediterranean Command.

 

~George Arthur in The Spectator, 29/06/1933 [heavily abridged: the original is 1,050 words]

The only criticism which can be made of this excellent book is that it does not handle its subject in the direct and intimate manner which has hitherto characterized the work of its author. E. F. Benson has already published two charming volumes of memoirs covering the period which is the theme of this book: As We Were and As We Are. One gets the impression, in reading his biography of King Edward, that he was a little hampered by these earlier works. For Mr. Benson was a contemporary of King Edward; he knew the greater part of the actors in the drama, he was their friend and their intimate; but it is only rarely that he allows himself in this work to make use of the remarkable personal knowledge he has of his subject. He writes of Edward VII as an excellent and conscientious historian, but a little as he might write of Henry VIII or Richard of Bordeaux. That doubtless was the task which he set himself; the reader, however, cannot but prefer those passages in which Mr. Benson consents to forget that he is a historian in order to become a memorialist.

~André Maurois in The Saturday Review, 23/09/1933 [again heavily abridge: original 1,195 words]

 

This is not a contribution to biography, or to history, or to literature, but it has its uses. Mr. Benson presents all the salient facts in the life of Edward VII, and in the main he discusses them fairly and intelligently. He does not become indignant at the King's well-known lapses from sound Christian morals, but instead tries to explain them as the result of the cold and Puritanical training of his youth. As sovereign he certainly was not a shining light, but equally certainly he was not stupid. "By virtue of a detached fairmindedness he could both disagree and appreciate," and unlike his mother, he always differentiated between persons and politics. Altogether, he was probably a good change for England after Queen Victoria. There are many illustrations, and also an index.

~The American Mercury, 11/1933

A generation has almost grown up since King Edward died, and far less than half the population can clearly remember when he was Prince of Wales. Yet he seems a wonderfully familiar figure to us all; and here is the third important book to be published on him within a few years. The official biography by Sir Sidney Lee was published in 1927, and a short, brilliant study by Mrs H E Wortham this year. It is, therefore, inevitable that this book has little that is new in it, but if Mr Benson leads us along familiar paths, he guides us with such zest and originality that it is difficult to remember that we knew it all before. I think that he has described the historical and political background with a clearness and simplicity that are wholly admirable, in front of which the King stands out ~ a shrewd, gay, vital, friendly man. [...]

When the historian of the future comes to decide the importance of King Edward in European history, he may not agree with all that Mr Benson says in his appreciation of the King, but he can hardly fail to be stimulated and charmed by this delightful study of a very human man.

 

~Roger Fulford in The Yorkshire Post, 29/06/1933

The Age of Walnut

Non-fiction
Benson provided a brief foreword to this book on furniture, published in 1932

Assunta's Sacrifice

Fiction ~ short story

Published in Vanity Fair, December 1928
more details to follow ~ we hope



THE CRITICS

Vanity Fair winter number is always good reading; that issued to-day is no exception. The stories by E F Benson, Max Pemberton, and other well-known writers are agreeable and seasonable reading.

~Pall Mall Gazette, 03/12/1898

 

Spook Stories

Fiction ~ collection of short stories
Published April 1928

The collection comprises twelve stories:

Reconciliation
The Face
Spinach
Bagnell Terrace
A Tale of an Empty House
Naboth's Vineyard
Expiation
Home, Sweet Home
"And No Bird Sings ..."
The Corner House
Corstophine
The Temple

For reviews of the individual stories, click on the links above.  For reviews of the book as a whole, see below.
The whole book is available online here.



THE CRITICS

[Next to G K Chesterton] Mr E. F. Benson is perhaps the amateur who has had most success in devising thrillers. Mr Benson's forte is the short mystery story. His new book of these, Spook Stories […], is an amateur detective series rather than a collection of ghost shockers. The setting is usually a picturesque little cottage where murder has been done, the villain in the piece a house agent, who entices thither two aged gentlemen on holiday bent, and thrills and light relief are provided by their encounters with ghosts when they would much rather have been enjoying a quite game of solitaire.

 

~Aberdeen Press and Journal, 05/04/1928

One does not take seriously a book entitled Spook Stories […]. For one reason the use of the term 'spook' suggests humour rather than horror. Not even E. F. Benson's name as author can impart any significance or gravity to the fantastic tales here assembled. The first of these involves an amazing coincidence which links the young owner of a haunted mansion with prospective tenants whose forebears had figured in a sordid tragedy enacted within its walls. In another story, entitled The Face, a happy young wife is tortured by nightmare visions of an evil-looking man who threatens to compel her to come with him. In the end the hapless woman disappears, her footprints being traced to a graveyard in which a landslide has exposed the body of the man who had haunted her dreams. This finale is robbed of any tragic stress by the patent artificiality which makes known the final experience of the victim. The woman disappeared; how then could her last movements be detailed?

~The Courier and Advertiser [Dundee], 19/04/1928

Spook Stories (1928) is perhaps the least distinguished volume of Benson’s ghostly tales (which were typically first published individually in literary monthlies), but it is richest in the glamour and enchantments of an English country garden. Curiously, the novelist Joan Aiken's faintly aggravating Forward to the 1992 edition of Benson’s Collected Ghost Stories (which boasts that she was an affirmed fan of Benson by the age of six) immediately singles out Spook Stories for attention, slagging it off for being “tamer” than M. R. James' tales, before admitting that “there was something very likable about the collection,” namely its evocation of “a comfortable, definite, and instantly recognisable world.” Yet this model of England as a fund of holiday destinations may strike one as being highly idealised rather than “instantly recognisable.”

[…] but Spook Stories could almost make one lose their heart to England. […] There is little politics to this. Benson does not cling to the nation because it provides a spurious sense of certainty and belonging, but he is instead a connoisseur of the English character, its manners and traditions, and the towns and shires from which it emerged. His is an England so pure that anybody would find themselves exiled from it. […] Benson had keenly observed the England which he dreamed about: he had dined with the burghers of his home town of Rye, rifled its antique shops, and disappeared to the nearby coast to peep at the local birdlife through his binoculars.

The English countryside could not be realistically portrayed as idyllic when millions of modern workers had lately fled to the cities, but there are no happy peasants in Benson’s England, merely a distant, dusty world of tradesmen and servants. We are left to survey a genial suburban Camelot of knightly bachelors, the sort of men who would regard a lawyer or a doctor as a servant.

[…] Benson was happy to have his stories collected in volumes. The careful arrangement of Spook Stories particularly draws attention to the sameness of the contributions, and suggests that the sum may be more interesting than its parts. We are invited to observe the destiny of a social class rather than merely those of the indistinguishable, forgettable [Hugh] Gra(i)ngers who happen to belong to it. The sole exception is provided by the penultimate story Corstophine.

[…] The thematic unity of Spook Stories partly arises from its founding , whose name is evoked in both Bagnell Terrace and Naboth’s Vineyard.

[…] the bourgeois desire for pleasant houses [...] recurs throughout Spook Stories.

 

~James Mooney at “Tychy”, 25/07/2011. Abridged. For the full review see here, and the individual stories