E. F. Benson

Junto con M.R. James, E.F. Benson (1867-1940) fue uno de los maestros victorianos de la «ghost story», un territorio del terror cuya exploración inició el gran escritor irlandés Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Benson y James pertenecían a la misma sociedad literaria de Cambridge, la «Chitchat Society», y mantuvieron una buena relación durante cincuenta años. Al igual que James, Benson trata de alejarse de los escenarios clásicos de ruinas, pasadizos y tinieblas, para insertar el horror en las zonas pacíficas de la vida cotidiana. «Estas historias -dice Benson- han sido escritas con la esperanza de proporcionar algunos agradables estremecimientos al lector, de modo que, si por ventura, alguien estuviera ocupando en su lectura la media hora anterior al momento de irse a la cama, cuando la noche y la casa permanecen en silencio, tal vez podría echar alguna mirada ocasional a las esquinas y zonas oscuras de la habitación donde se encuentra, para asegurarse de que nada inusual acecha en las sombras. Porque tal es el objetivo declarado de las historias de fantasmas, que tratan con las oscuras fuerzas de lo desconocido, y a veces -y de forma harto perturbadora- hacen que éstas se manifiesten. Por esta razón, el autor desea a sus lectores unos pocos momentos de inquietud».

Emmeline Lucas, más conocida como Lucía, es la más inolvidable, esnob y chismosa de las heroínas de la literatura inglesa del xx. Lucía es la reina del villorrio de Riseholme, que gobierna con mano de hierro y guante de seda con la ayuda de su fiel Georgie Pilson, aficionado al punto de cruz y al cotilleo salvaje. Cuando Pepino, el marido de Lucia, hereda una fortuna y una casa en Londres, todos en Riseholme respiran aliviados, a la vez que empiezan a tramar su venganza tras largos años de opresion. Por desgracia para ellos, Lucia conquista la capital del Imperio sorteando, uno tras otro, todos los obstaculos que se interponen entre ella y la grandeza. Pero ¿puede Lucia aguantarle el paso a la exigente y estirada sociedad londinense? ¿Abandonara su amada Riseholme para siempre?

Contains: Mapp and Lucia; Lucia's Progress; Trouble for Lucia These three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and 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 and Lucia are gross hypocrites, snobs and bullies, the huge differences in temperament and style ensure the battle is usually unequal. Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited and Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur and personal prestige. Driven by demons of revenge, Elisabeth always acts impulsively, and 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 and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth and through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia. Carabine also concentrates on the novels' disturbing, bitchy 'camp' humour whenever 'that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised'.

Contains: Queen Lucia; Miss Mapp; Lucia in London Lucia is one of the great comic characters in English literature. Outrageously pretentious, hypocritical and snobbish, Queen Luci 'by right divine' rules over the toy kingdom of 'Riseholme' based on the Cotswold village of Broadway. Her long-suffering husband Pepino is 'her prince-consort', the outrageously camp Georgie is her 'gentleman-in-waiting', the village green is her 'parliament', and her subjects, such as Daisy Quantock, are hapless would-be 'Bolsheviks'. In Lucia in London, the prudish, manically ambitious Lucia launches herself into the louche world of London society. Her earnest determination to learn all about 'modern movements' makes her the perfect comic vehicle for Benson's free-wheeling satire of salon society, and of the dominant fads and movements of the 1920s, including vegetarianism, yoga, palmistry, Freudianism, seances, Post-Impressionist art and Christian Science. Meanwhile in Tilling, clearly modelled on Benson's home town of Rye, Miss Mapp consume 'chronic rage and curiosity' sits at her window, armed with her light-opera glasses keeping baleful watch on her neighbours. 'Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil': and Benson transmutes her boiling into a series of small humiliations in his witty, malicious comedy. 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 fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia and the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth. Carabine also concentrates on the novels' disturbing, bitchy, 'camp' humour whenever 'that horrid thing which Freud calls sex' is raised.

This is a vintage murder mystery. WH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans...But have you discovered E. F. Benson yet? Morris Assheton is in love and means to be married. But his happiness is spoilt when he discovers that someone has been whispering poisonous rumours about him to the girl's father. The culprit is Mills, dastardly partner to the Assheton family's trusted lawyer. Morris vows revenge. When Mills' body is discovered, brutally beaten, the ugly quarrel comes to light and suspicion naturally falls on Morris. His innocence is debated in a tense courtroom, as an eager public and press look on. Murder mystery...Courtroom drama. This is a classic whodunnit from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.

Soon to be revived in a new BBC series, Mapp and Lucia is a poisonously witty, comic tale of two upper-class women battling for social supremacy in the most underhand ways possible

His body was pressed against the wall at the head of the bed, and the face was a mask of agonised horror and fruitless entreaty. But the eyes were already glazed in death, and before Francis could reach the bed the body had toppled over and lay inert and lifeless. Even as he looked, he heard a limping step go down the passage outside.' E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection. The range and variety of these spooky narratives is far broader and more adventurous than those of any other writer of supernatural fiction. Within the covers of this volume you will encounter revengeful spectres, vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous spectral worms and slugs and other entities of nameless dread. This is a classic collection that cannot fail to charm and chill.

Cynthia, Countess of Hampshire, was sitting in an extraordinarily elaborate dressing-gown one innocent morning in June, alternately opening letters and eating spoonfuls of sour milk prepared according to the prescription of Professor Metchnikoff. Every day it made her feel younger and stronger and more irresponsible (which is the root of all joy to natures of a serious disposition), and since (when a fortnight before she began this abominable treatment) she felt very young already, she was now almost afraid that she would start again on measles, croup, hoops, whooping-cough, peppermints, and other childish ailments and passions. But since this treatment not only induced youth, but was discouraging to all microbes but its own, she hoped as regards ailments that she would continue to feel younger and younger without suffering the penalties of childhood.

Una comedia chispeante y antológica que nos recuerda al mejor Wodehouse. Un clásico que constituye una de las cumbres de su autor. La señorita Mapp (a la que ya conocimos en la soberbia Mapp y Lucía) es una de las mas excentricas damas villanas de la comedia British. Reina y señora del pueblecito costero de Tilling, a cuyos habitantes maneja con mano de hierro en guante de terciopelo, la señorita Mapp es avara, intrigante y rencorosa, ademas de una cotilla de cuidado. Una mujer, en suma, tan fascinante y letal como una cobra. En Tilling sometera a padecimientos sin cuento a su circulo social: el mayor Benjamin Flint, obsesionado con el whisky y el golf, y con quien la señorita Mapp lleva años intentando casarse sin exito; su secuaz, el capitan Puffin, un don nadie que se ahoga en un vaso de agua; el discreto señor Wyse, que mantendra una relacion no tan discreta con la pretenciosa Susan Poppit, miembro de la Orden del Imperio Britanico y as del bridge; la desgraciada Godiva Plaistow o el Padre, un sacerdote que esta convencido de que habla en escoces.

It has been ordained by the wisdom of Nature that the same fact shall strike the majority of her foolish children almost simultaneously. This phenomenon can hardly have escaped the most casual observer; the majority of swallows, for instance, in any given area will agree, practically in the same week, that our English autumn is no longer tolerable, and with consenting twitterings set their heads southwards; or in the spring, again, one may observe that in any given field daisies and buttercups will determine, only to be nipped by unpunctual frosts, that it is now time to come out, while even man, that most vacillating and least uniform of all created things, has a certain sympathy in his sensations; the sap stirs with moderately equal effervescence in the most dissimilar units; and without further preamble, to take the case in point, London settles without consultation, but with considerable unanimity, when spring may be considered to have stopped and summer to have begun.

'His body was pressed against the wall at the head of the bed, and the face was a mask of agonised horror and fruitless entreaty. But the eyes were already glazed in death, and before Francis could reach the bed the body had toppled over and lay inert and lifeless. Even as he looked, he heard a limping step go down the passage outside.' E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection. The range and variety of these spooky narratives is far broader and more adventurous than those of any other writer of supernatural fiction. Within the covers of this volume you will encounter revengeful spectres, vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous spectral worms and slugs and other entities of nameless dread. This is a classic collection that cannot fail to charm and chill.

"Mapp & Lucia" first published in 1935. "Lucias progress" first published 1935. "Trouble for Lucia" first published in 1939.

United by a perfect chilling atmosphere and graceful literary style, these ghostly stories range from the horror of vampires, homicidal ghosts and monstrous spectral worms and slugs (appearing in the classic "Negotium Perambulans" and "And No Bird Sings") to the satire of humorous tales that poke fun at charlatan mediums and fake seances ("Spinach" and "Mr Tillys Seance"). This new edition brings together E.F. Bensons greatest stories, making this the one book that no fan of Bensons or of things spectral can afford to miss.

Los relatos reunidos invitan a un inquietante recorrido por una extensa galería de espectros. El verdadero aficionado a los exquisitos placeres del miedo, aquel que vendería su alma al diablo por un buen cuento de terror no debe perdérselo.