E. F. Benson (Edward Frederic Benson) Biography

British novelist, brother of A. C. and R. H. Benson, born at Wellington College, Berkshire, educated at King's College, Cambridge and the British School of Archaeology in Athens. His successful first novel, Dodo (1893), was followed by a stream of novels, biographies, and reminiscences. He is most famous for the series of comic novels he published during the 1920s and 1930s, the ‘Mapp and Lucia’ books, which satirize provincial life in the small coastal town of Tilling (Rye) and which contain, in the characters of Lucia, grande dame of Tilling, and her rival, Miss Mapp, two of the most endearing comic types in British fiction. The novels include Queen Lucia (1920), Miss Mapp (1922), Lucia in London (1927), Mapp and Lucia (1931), Lucia's Progress (1935), and Trouble for Lucia (1937). In 1918 Benson moved to Rye, living at Lamb House, formerly the home of H. James, and was elected mayor of the town in 1934 (an experience amusingly reflected in his Mapp and Lucia stories). His other fiction includes several volumes of ghost stories, such as The Room in the Tower (1912) and Visible and Invisible (1923), as well as novels such as the tragi-comic Mrs Ames (1912) and Paying Guests (1929). As We Were (1930) and Final Edition (1940) are autobiographies. He was awarded the OBE and made an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. A biography by Brian Masters appeared in 1991.