Mapp and Lucia
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Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and is also the name of a television series based on those novels.
[edit] The novels
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. Several of them are set in the small seaside town of Tilling, closely based on Rye, East Sussex, where Benson lived for a number of years and (like Lucia) served as mayor. Lucia previously lived at Riseholme, based on Broadway, Worcestershire, from where she brought to Tilling her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. The books provide deep insights into how key members of a small, close-knit community interact with each other. Although this may not sound very promising material for modern-day readers, the books are very funny and engage one's keen interest to see how the two main protagonists, the elegant and sophisticated Lucia, and the malicious and frumpy Miss Mapp score off each other and extricate themselves from social disasters.
Benson set the novels in Rye using Lamb House, where he lived, as the home of Miss Mapp, subsequently Lucia. The house was previously lived in by Henry James and really did have a garden room overlooking the street. (Unfortunately a German bomb destroyed it in the Second World War.)
Lovers of the books treasure the catchphrase used in the earlier novels where characters quip "Au reservoir"
The novels, in chronological order, are:
- Queen Lucia (1920)
- Miss Mapp (1922)
- Lucia in London (1927)
- Mapp and Lucia (1931)
- Lucia's Progress (1935) (published in the U.S. as The Worshipful Lucia)
- Trouble for Lucia (1939)
In 1977 Thomas Y. Cromwell Company reprinted all six novels in a compendium called Make Way for Lucia. The order of Miss Mapp and Lucia in London was switched in the compendium, and a Miss Mapp short story called "The Male Impersonator" was included between Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia.
There were also two sequels, written by Tom Holt and published by Macmillan and Black Swan, which are written in a style and esprit so similar as the originals as to be rightly praised. However, in what sense the word 'authentic' can be used to describe them remains something of a mystery! They are:
- Lucia in Wartime (1985)
- Lucia Triumphant (1986)
[edit] The TV series
The TV series based on the three 1930s books, produced by London Weekend Television, was filmed in Rye and neighbouring Winchelsea in the 1980s, and starred Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie. There were ten episodes.
