E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels revolve around two forceful and irrepressible women who dominate their respective villages in southern England and who end up hilariously at war with each other. Lucia is the more deadly of the two, with lofty morals, pretentious tastes, and a lust for power; a benevolent dictator, but a dictator nonetheless. Miss Elizabeth Mapp, on the other hand, is younger and more forceful and able to terrify her opponents into submission. Benson introduces these two unforgettable characters in the first two novels of the series, Queen Lucia (1920) and Miss Mapp (1922).