Dodo Wonders

Chapter I DODO DE SENECTUTE Dodo was so much interested in what she had herself been saying, that having just lit one cigarette, she lit another at it, and now contemplated the two with a dazed expression. She was talking to Edith Arbuthnot, who had just returned from a musical tour in Germany, where she had conducted a dozen concerts consisting entirely of her own music with flaring success. She had been urged by her agent to give half a dozen more, the glory of which, he guaranteed, would completely eclipse that of the first series, but instead she had come back to England. She did not quite know why she had done so: her husband Bertie had sent the most cordial message to say that he and their daughter Madge were getting on quite excellently without her--indeed that seemed rather unduly stressed--but ... here she was. The statement of this, to be enlarged on no doubt later, had violently switched the talk on to a discussion on free will. Edith, it may be remarked, had arrived at her house in town only to find that her husband and daughter had already gone away for Whitsuntide, and being unable to support the idea of a Sunday alone in London, had sent off a telegram to Dodo, whom she knew to be at Winston, announcing her advent, and had arrived before it. On the other hand, her luggage had not arrived at all, and for the present she was dressed in a tea-gown of Dodo's, and a pair of Lord Chesterford's tennis-shoes which fitted her perfectly.

Dodo is one of the finest creations of E. F. Benson, a darling of the upper echelons of Edwardian society. Here are collected two parts of the 'Dodo' story. This book was originally published in 1921 and 1913. We are republishing it here with a new introductory biography of the author.

Dodo Trilogy is composed of three novels by E.F. Benson. His very first novel, Dodo: A Detail of the Day (1893), which featured a portrait of the composer and militant suffragette Ethel Smyth (which she "gleefully acknowledged", according to actress Prunella Scales) was back then fashionably controversial and became an instant success. He repeated the success of Dodo, with the same cast of characters a generation later: Dodo the Second (1914), "a unique chronicle of the pre-1914 Bright Young Things" and Dodo Wonders (1921), "a first-hand social history of the Great War in Mayfair and the Shires. Table of contents: Dodo; A Detail of the Day Dodo's Daughter or Dodo the Second Dodo Wonders 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.

Dodo Wonders is a novel about the experiences of an English composer and singer, Dodo. Dodo, on the receding part of middle age, is now at an age where she reflects philosophically on life's mysteries. Her recent trip to Germany has left her drawn to what she sees as, "That great, relentless, magnificent machine that never stops and is never careless." But as the world lunges perilously toward the Great War, relations between English and German acquaintances will be tested to their limits...