[Gutenberg 40795] • Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer best known for his Mapp and Lucia series, social satires written relatively late in his career which are set in the fictional town of Tilling based on Rye in East Sussex where Benson lived for many years and served as mayor from 1934. The novels recount humorous incidents in the lives of upper middle-class characters who vie for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. He started his novel writing career with the (then) fashionably controversial Dodo (1893) which was an instant success and featured a scathing description of composer and militant suffragette Ethel Smyth. The same cast of characters reappeared in Dodo the Second (1914; Dodo's Daughter in the US, 1913) and then Dodo Wonders (1921). Scarlet and Hyssop (1902) is another of Benson's satirical depictions of Edwardian high society, this time with the subject of adultery at its core.