Edward Frederic Benson

Edward Frederic Benson (July 24, 1867 – February 29, 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. His friends called him Fred.

E.F. Benson was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, the fifth child of the headmaster, Edward White Benson (later Archbishop of Canterbury), and Mary Sidgwick Benson. He was a brother of Arthur Christopher Benson, who wrote the words to Land of Hope and Glory, and Robert Hugh Benson, author of several novels and Catholic apologetic works.

Despite starting his novel writing career with the (then) fashionably controversial Dodo, and following it with a variety of satire and romantic melodrama, Benson is principally known for his Mapp and Lucia series, consisting of six novels and three short stories about Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp. The novels are: Queen Lucia, Lucia in London, Miss Mapp (including the short story The Male Impersonator), Mapp and Lucia, Lucia's Progress (published as The Worshipful Lucia in the U.S.) and Trouble for Lucia.

The principal setting of four of the books is a town called Tilling, which is recognizably based on Rye, East Sussex, where Benson lived for many years and served as Mayor. Benson's home, Lamb House, served as the model for Mallards, Lucia's home in some of the Tilling series. Lamb House was earlier the home of Henry James, and later of Rumer Godden.

In London, Benson also lived at 395 Oxford Street, W1 (now the branch of Russell & Bromley just west of Bond Street Underground Station), 102 Oakley Street, SW3, and 25 Brompton Square, SW3, where much of the action of Lucia in London takes place and where English Heritage placed a Blue Plaque in 1994.

The last three books were serialized by London Weekend Television for the fledgling Channel 4 in 1985–6 under the series title Mapp and Lucia and starring Prunella Scales, Geraldine McEwan and Nigel Hawthorne; the first three have been adapted for BBC Radio 4 by both Aubrey Woods and (most recently) Ned Sherrin.

Benson was also known as a writer of ghost stories, which frequently appear in collections, and of a series of biographies/autobiographies and memoirs, including one of Charlotte Brontë. His last book, completed shortly before his death, was a memoir entitled As We Were.

A critical essay on Benson's ghost stories appears in S. T. Joshi's book The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004).

He died in 1940 of throat cancer in University College Hospital, London.

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