Paying Guests

Paying Guests is one of the last novels of E.F. Benson. The story is set around the Wentworth mention, a small boarding house in Bolton Spa and its owners and lodgers, usual and recognizable Benson's characters. They are quite unlikable, mainly upper-middle-class English people who came to the Spa to cure their body illnesses, but also to fill the time and escape boredom despite having no passions, interests and work. Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. He started his novel writing career in 1893 with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. He repeated the success of Dodo, with sequels to this novel, but the greatest success came relatively late in his career with The Mapp and Lucia series consisting of six novels and two short stories. The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique, and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories.

Edward Frederic Benson, commonly known as E. F. Benson (1867–1940), was a prolific English novelist, biographer, memoirist, and short story writer, known for his elegant prose and keen insight into human nature. Born in Wellington College, Berkshire, where his father was the headmaster, Benson was part of a prominent intellectual family, which included his brothers A. C. Benson and R. H. Benson, both celebrated writers of their times. Educated at Marlborough and King's College, Cambridge, Benson went on to write over 100 books across various genres.

Benson is most renowned for his series of satirical 'Mapp and Lucia' novels which portray the social rivalries and petty squabbles of upper-middle-class English society. 'Paying Guests' (1929), while less known, is emblematic of his skill in capturing the comedy and pathos of everyday life. His work often exhibits a blend of humor and satire, underpinned by an incisive wit. Benson's ability to explore the dimensions of character, coupled with his often disarmingly simple plotlines, has endeared him to readers and influenced subsequent generations of writers. Despite the variety of his literary output, it is his dexterity with the comedy of manners that continues to define Benson's literary legacy, reflecting the mores and tensions of his time with a timeless resonance.