E. F. Benson’s Miss Mapp (1922) introduces one of English fiction’s great comic monsters: Elizabeth Mapp, sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, and utterly convinced of her own social superiority in the small Sussex town of Tilling. From her garden-room window she catalogues her neighbours’ sins and scandals with gleeful, unceasing malice, and plots against them with the energy of a born general.
Benson’s comedy is perfectly calibrated throughout — cutting but never merely cruel, precise and endlessly re-readable. Download this free EPUB and place yourself under the queen of Tilling’s tireless and watchful eye.