With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury.


These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye). Their constant skirmishes ensure that every game of bridge, tea or dinner-party, church service, council meeting or art-exhibition are thrilling encounters that ensure Tilling is always on 'a very agreeable rack of suspense'. Both Elisabeth and Lucia are gross hypocrites, snobs and bullies, the huge differences in temperament and style ensure the battle is usually unequal. Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited and Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur and personal prestige. Driven by demons of revenge, Elisabeth always acts impulsively, and therefore every revelation of her meanness allows Lucia, the consummate actress, to kill her ally with a sickening kindness.


In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth and through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia. Carabine also concentrates on the novels' disturbing, bitchy, 'camp' humour whenever 'that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised'

• We started tracking this book on December 11, 2015.
• This book was £1.49 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 6 times in the past 3,437 days.
• The current price of this book is £1.49 last checked 8 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is £1.24.
• The lowest price to date was £0.99 last reached on July 3, 2017.
• This book has been £0.99 2 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was £1.49 last reached on May 18, 2020.
• This book has been £1.49 4 times since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its highest price since we started tracking it.

• Literature & FictionClassics

• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 675 Pages
• File Size: 3,027 KB