The six Mapp and Lucia novels by Edward Frederic Benson, one of the most popular short-story writers and novelists of the Edwardian period, continue to enjoy a worldwide cult following more than seventy years after the publication of Queen Lucia (1920). Encouraged by the brilliant success of his first novel, Dodo (1893), he produced more than one hundred books in a variety of genres: novels, short-story collections, biographies, memoirs, political commentaries, and sporting and fitness manuals; he also wrote plays and poetry. Although the sheer number of his novels has obscured his contributions as a short-story writer, almost two hundred stories have been traced to such exclusive, illustrated monthlies and glossy weeklies as the Illustrated London News,Pall Mall Magazine,Pearson's Magazine, and Windsor Magazine, as well as to many of the refined middle-class and "quality" ladies' magazines: Woman,Woman at Home, the Lady's Realm, and Eve. Fewer than one-third of these stories were printed in the eight short-story collections published during his lifetime.
