Queen Lucia

by E. F. Benson

Overview

Queen Lucia is a humorous delightful book. E F Benson was a 19th century English biographer, novelist, short story writer, and memoirist. Benson wrote several ghost stories. His Mapp and Lucia series is his best known work. Lucia's supremacy as the social and cultural queen of an English village is challenged when one friend discovers an Indian guru and begins yoga lessons. Olga a beautiful diva comes to challenge Lucia's rule over the gentry of Riseholme. Lucia's ego is challenged by the guru who is a fraud and her Italian which is also fraudulent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781667125
Publisher:	Andrews UK
Publication date:	06/19/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	527 KB

About the Author

E. F. Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific novelist, dramatist, short story writer, and biographer. He wrote biographies of Sir Francis Drake, Alcibiades, Ferdinand Magellan, Queen Victoria, and Charlotte Bronte. The son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a bit eccentric, he studied archaeology at Kings College, Cambridge, and served as Mayor of Rye near the end of his life.

Editorial Reviews

There is some irony in the fact that Benson, the creator of everything from plays to sober biographies, is best remembered for his series of "Lucia" novels, delicious satires of the pretensions and foibles of provincial middle-class life in Britain in the 1920s and '30s. Still, given Benson's droll send-ups of the bitter battles waged by matrons desperate to live out their fantastical versions of upper-class elegance and wit, and his shrewd readings of the ways in which our longings can make us both bizarre and sometimes appealing, it's very likely an irony he would have savored. His six novels chronicling the rise and fall and rise ad infinitum of Mrs. Emmeline Lucas of Riseholm are now being reissued as trade paperbacks. Queen Lucia, the first in the series, follows Mrs. Lucas ('Lucia' to her most intimate friends) through a lengthy and often hilarious campaign to derail the career of a would-be rival to the throne of cultural arbiter. The plot, however, is less important than the pratfalls. The six Lucia novels form a kind of epic portrait of striving gone mod, and it's good to have them appearing once again.

Kirkus Reviews

An altogether satisfying entertainment; full of humorous situations, sparkling with wholesome wit.”

Times Literary Supplement (London)

These fingers have written many accolades about the voice and interpretations of Nadia May, but they are tingling with pleasure at her rendition of E. F. Benson’s characters in the English town of Riseholme…Such fun does Nadia May have with the stylized characters that the listener actually lives there and is part of the silly rituals of the ’30s…Her delight in reading this novel is directly transmitted to the lucky listener.”

AudioFile

[The narrator’s] British accent and richly condescending tone are just right for Queen Lucia…She breathes the personality of the wealthy Lucia into each sentence.”

Media Inc.