Perennial Reading: E.F. Benson’s six books in the “Make Way for Lucia” series

E.F. Benson's home in Rye, East Sussex. The house is "Mallards," in Tilling, in the Lucia novels.

These books, written by English author E.F. Benson between the two World Wars, are some of the most delightful novels of the 20th century. That is not a statement that this Constant Reader (that would be me) makes lightly! I discovered E.F. Benson in the late 1980s, and have read and re-read each one, in order, every few years ever since. I’ve just finished Part 4 (in which Mapp and Lucia disappear during the floods, last seen by the anxious residents of Tilling clinging to Lucia’s kitchen table as the tide rushed them into the English Channel) for probably the seventh time, and am about to immerse myself in Part 5. The books, which are still in print and available, often with an introduction written by author Nancy Mitford, consist of the following titles:
Part 1: Queen Lucia
Part 2: Lucia in London
Part 3:Miss Mapp
Part 4: Mapp and Lucia
Part 5: The Worshipful Lucia
Part 6: Trouble for Lucia

The books chronicle the daily lives of the upper-middle class residents of two fictional English towns. The effects of war, politics, economic woes, and other pesky issues that might have bothered other people during those years take a back seat to the truly important mattes like “why does Daisy’s ouidja board always repeat “Lucia is a snob,” will Miss Mapp ever capture Major Flint in matrimony, and will Lucia, whose Machiavellian yet invigorating management of her circle of friends, ever fail at anything she sets her mind to do? These gentle books, whose characters three generations of readers have loved and cheered, are a perfect anodyne to today’s world of speed, sex, and noise.