With an Introduction & Notes by Dr Keith Carabine University of Kent at Canterbury These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia & Elisabeth Mapp for social & cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye) Their constant skirmishes ensure that every game of bridge tea or dinner-party church service council meeting or art-exhibition are thrilling encounters that ensure Tilling is always on a very agreeable rack of suspense' Both Elisabeth & Lucia are gross hypocrites snobs & bullies the huge differences in temperament & style ensure the battle is usually unequal Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited & Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur & personal prestige Driven by demons of revenge Elisabeth always acts impulsively & therefore every revelation of her meanness allows Lucia the consummate actress to kill her ally with a sickening kindness In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson like Jane Austen invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded chronic anger & jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth & through the self-deluded fabrications & day-dreams of Lucia Carabine also concentrates on the novels' disturbing bitchy camp' humour whenever that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised'