FICTION

DESIRABLE RESIDENCES AND OTHER STORIES by E. F. Benson (Oxford University Press: $22.95; 288 pp.). Largely forgotten for a number of decades until the BBC-TV adaptations of his “Mapp and Lucia” stories, E. F. Benson was a highly prolific writer of both novels and short stories. This collection of little-known or long-lost examples of the latter does a splendid job of demonstrating his range. From melodrama to comedy of manners to ghost stories, the collapse of the Victorian era and the rise of the Jazz Age are wittily and skillfully chronicled. The stories are grouped by type: The adventures of professional social climber Amy Bondham are sheer delight, while Benson’s capricious heroine Dodo makes an essence-capturing appearance. The “spook” stories perhaps have lost some edge over time, but the society tales, reminiscent of Nancy Mitford, contain characters and all varieties of manners and morals that remain as fresh at the end of the century as they were at the beginning.