In this novel, Lucia leaves her small town of Riseholme and moves to London, where she attacks the city's social life with the same eager ferocity.

While her Riseholme friends Georgie Pillson and Daisy Quantock seethe with envy, Lucia moves to Brompton Square, where she can social-climb to the highest circles.

"[4] In Frivolity Unbound, Robert F. Kiernan writes, "The fun of the novel and its camp appeal is that the delirium of Lucia's runaway ambition never bedims her sense of genteel propriety.

The affectations that never fool anyone, the extraordinary expenditure of energy upon evanescent goals, and the willingness to risk all her dramatic effects upon a momentary inspiration make her an actress, not a Madwoman of Chaillot.

"[2] In The Alchemy of Laughter, Glen Cavaliero observes that in Lucia in London, "her snobbery, pretentiousness and blatant social climbing are neutralised and become occasions for an altogether wittier kind of mockery.