Volume 24, Number 11 · June 23, 1977
Pleasures of Malice
By V.S. Pritchett
Make Way for Lucia: The Complete Lucia
by E.F. Benson
Crowell, 913 pp., $14.95
The Edwardian period in English literature which runs, I suppose, from the 1880s until 1914 was prolific in light, satirical Society novelists of remarkable urbanity and invention. The exclusive Meredith was one of the gods; the moment for high comedy had come. One can see why: an age of surfeit had arrived. The lives of the upper classes were both enlivened and desiccated by what seems to have been a continuous diet of lobster and champagne—a diet well suited in its aftereffects to the stimulation of malice. The class system gave the ironies of snobbery their double edge. Society lived out its fairy tale life, spent its time changing its extravagant clothes several times a day, and was entertained by the antics of social climbers. And whether they are writing about manners, high, middling, or low, these light novelists have a common quality: they are accomplished, they are even elegant.
Review, 2220 words
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