Paying Guests takes places at “Wentworth,” a guest house in the fictional town of Bolton Spa, which offers baths and nasty-smelling waters to a group of permanent invalids. Wentworth is terribly genteel, recognized not only for the comfort it offers but also for the social standing of its guests. Who — this being a Benson novel — are silly at best, stupendously annoying at worst. The stars of the show are the pompous, self-regarding Colonel Chase, a former Indian Army officer who lords it over the other guests at Wentworth, bragging incessantly about his excellent health and bullying them all at the bridge table, a pair of middle-aged spinsters who later become a couple and a Mrs. Bliss who espouses Mental Science, a thin disguise for Christian Science.
Edward Frederic Benson (24 July 1867 - 29 February 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E. F. Benson.
Benson's first book was Sketches from Marlborough. He started his novel writing career with the (then) fashionably controversial Dodo (1893), which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama.
A prolific writer, Benson created the famous Mapp and Lucia series, which satirized upper-middle class British life in the 1920s and 30s. He also developed a reputation for writing macabre ghost stories and other stories of the supernatural, which have been adapted for film and television.
This e-Book features a linked table of contents.
Enjoy reading Paying Guests.
Edward Frederic Benson (24 July 1867 - 29 February 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E. F. Benson.
Benson's first book was Sketches from Marlborough. He started his novel writing career with the (then) fashionably controversial Dodo (1893), which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama.
A prolific writer, Benson created the famous Mapp and Lucia series, which satirized upper-middle class British life in the 1920s and 30s. He also developed a reputation for writing macabre ghost stories and other stories of the supernatural, which have been adapted for film and television.
This e-Book features a linked table of contents.
Enjoy reading Paying Guests.
