Like his famous Lucia character, E.F. Benson's Miss Mapp is a strikingly original comic creation, an arch-schemer and social climber from the British town of Tilling. A fortyish spinster, "anger and the gravest suspicion about everybody had kept her young and on the boil." Elizabeth Mapp spends her days looking out the window of her home, using opera glasses and a notebook to chart her neighbors affairs. Nothing escapes her as she spies on Major Benjamin Flint (who she has been trying to marry for years,) Captain Puffin, "Quaint Irene", a free-spirited artist, and the underhanded Miss Susan Poppet, a woman plotting to purchase the ingredients of Miss Mapp's secret iced red-currant recipe. Miss Mapp is a hilarious, sharply-observed satire that lovingly—but pointedly—pokes fun at the feuds and foibles of English high society.