You can't ignore this volume if you've enjoyed Lucia Rising. In some ways better – the battles between Mapp and Lucia really make for some of the best social comedy since Jane Austen. Dated now, of course, but if no-one had written about the foibles of the members of this very English class, who now would know anything about them? ( )

Hilarious and caustic socio-cultural satire of the order of Jane Austen. The Lucia books are basically Austen books minus the romantic plot-lines and transplanted into the 1920s. E.F. Benson has the same fearless eye for comical absurdity in human behavior, the same delight in follies and nonsense. ( )

What a splendid book! This is a collection of the three Tilling books about Emmeline Lucas (Lucia) and Elizabeth Mapp. Terribly English and full of petty snobbery and point-scoring in a thinly disguised Rye, the books sound unpromising and the characters detestable, but Benson writes with humour and even affection about their various quests for social success. There is little malice, and what there is is unsustained. The triviality of the characters' concerns does not in any way lessen the reader's burning need to see what happens next. ( )

The complete Mapp & Lucia omnibus.

Delightful comedy of polite society in rural England in the late 1920s. Mapp & Lucia is the most celebrated of Benson’s 6 novels featuring his eponymous heroines - not surprising, as it is the first time he brings these Valkyries (Stephen Pile’s word) together in a head-to-head clash.

It is hard to imagine today a society devoting so much energy to social points scoring, but it assuredly was. Benson makes it all come alive again. This is a comic classic. ( )