It is the fourth of six novels in the popular Mapp and Lucia series, about idle women in the 1920s and their struggle for social dominance over their small communities.

In this novel, Lucia and Georgie leave Riseholme to take up summer residence in Tilling, renting Miss Mapp's home of Mallards.

Determined not to stick around in Riseholme while Daisy plays Queen, Lucia and her friend Georgie Pillson drive down to the quaint seaside town of Tilling, where Elizabeth Mapp lives.

Lucia, naturally, has no interest in being bossed, and she easily charms the Tillingites — Diva Plaistow, Major Benji Flint, Mr. and Mrs. Wyse, the Padre and wife, and Quaint Irene — who were sick of being under Mapp's thumb.

Now the undisputed society leader, Lucia organizes dull musical parties which consist of listening to her play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata on the piano.

She manages to get Flint to finally propose to her, and the novel ends with her wedding party, where she serves "Lobster á la Riseholme", based on the recipe that she stole from Lucia.

In Frivolity Unbound, Robert F. Kiernan writes that in this fourth book, Benson "stages a battle of leading ladies.

"[2] In The Alchemy of Laughter, Glen Cavaliero discusses "the fascination exerted by 'the sacred monster', the person one likes to read about but would hate to live with.

There are many such in English fiction, from Fielding's Squire Western down to Nancy Mitford's fire-eating Uncle Matthew and to Inge Middleton and others in the work of Angus Wilson.

"[4] Iain Finlayson writes that Benson "would have been charmed to know that, forty years after his death, he would be back in vogue with the six novels featuring Miss Mapp and Lucia.

These, being constantly reprinted, and selling in quantity (thanks in large part to the television series based on the novels), are perfect little masterpieces, minor period gems, adored by aficionados of their rather camp comedy.