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 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 novels, in chronological order, are:
- Queen Lucia (1920)
- Lucia in London (1922)
- Miss Mapp (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:
- Lucia in Wartime (1985)
- Lucia Triumphant (1986)
[edit] The TV series
The TV series, produced by London Weekend Television, was filmed in Rye in the 1980s, and starred Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie. There were ten episodes.
