E. F. Benson

E. F. Benson was an English author, one of three literary brothers born to Edward White Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, at Wellington College, where his father was then headmaster. Extraordinarily prolific across realistic novels and society fiction, he is remembered today chiefly for his ghost stories and for the satirical Mapp and Lucia novels, beginning with Queen Lucia (1920), which follow the social rivalries of two formidable Englishwomen. His supernatural fiction, collected in volumes including The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912) and Visible and Invisible (1923), ranges from vampiric hauntings to tales that edge into early science fiction, including a device for extracting the final thoughts of the recently dead. Later fantastical novels, including The Inheritor (1930) and Raven's Brood (1934), drew on classical myth and English folklore. Benson's ghost stories remain widely anthologized, and the Mapp and Lucia books have been repeatedly adapted for television.