The Worshipful Lucia & Trouble for Lucia: The Mapp & Lucia Novels

The Worshipful Lucia (published in the UK as Lucia’s Progress) and Trouble for Lucia are the fifth and sixth novels in E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series. They chronicle the ongoing battles of his most famous and irrepressible characters–Mrs. Lucia Lucas and Miss Elizabeth Mapp. Both women have been used to dominating their social circles; the idyllic seaside village of Tilling proves too small for both of them. Lucia is the more deadly of the two, with lofty morals, pretentious tastes, and a lust for power, while Mapp is younger, more forceful, and able to terrify her opponents into submission. While both are hypocritical snobs, Lucia is animated by splendid delusions of grandeur and Mapp by insatiable curiosity and chronic rage; their epic collisions rock their small society and provide the narrative engines for Benson’s farcical masterpieces.