Miss Elizabeth Mapp is a magnificient grande dame heiress always on the lookout lest her nieghbors fall outside the bounds of perfect, exemplary manners. But her tightly controlled world is soon beset on all sides by interloper, first threatened by the disturbingly masculine forms of two very different retired army officers - both of whom are anything but retiring in their conflicting aims upon her heart. Secondly appears the elegant, insidiously evil shape of ravishing Contessa possessed of dazzling charm and diobetical designs.

(Key Words: Fiction, Novels, England, E. F. Benson, Irony, Humor, Nancy Milford).