The Freaks of Mayfair - Hardcover

In a series of hilariously dry fictional sketches, E.F. Benson offers a glimpse of the most exclusive of societies ‹ Edwardian Mayfair. It was a world that he knew intimately, and he presents each of its denizens as a distinct representative of an anthropological ³type.² We meet Sir Louis and Lady Mary Marigold, who practice snobbery as an art form; ³Aunt² Georgie, a cheerful bachelor with a passion for embroidery; Mrs. Weston, a devoted follower of health cults and spiritual fads; Horace Campbell, the poisonous society gossip; Mrs. Sarah Whitehand, the social-climbing wife of an American toilet-bowl magnate; and Mr. Sandow, a socialite vicar who seems interested in everything but spirituality. These and a number of other intriguing specimens, all greedily jockeying for social standing, are impaled, labeled, and preserved for our entertainment on the razor-sharp scalpel of Benson¹s savage wit.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and member of a distinguished and eccentric family. After attending Marlborough and King's College, Cambridge where he studied classics and archaeology, he worked at the British School of Archaeology in Athens. One of our greatest humorists, he achieved great success at an early age with his first novel, Dodo (1893). He was a prolific author writing over a hundred books: serious novels, ghost stories, plays and biographies. But he is best remembered for his Lucia comedies written between 1920 and 1939 and other comic novels such as Paying Guests and Mrs Ames. He became mayor of Rye, the Sussex town that provided the model for his fictional Tilling, from 1934 to 1937.