Best known for his Mapp and Lucia series, Edward Frederic Benson was an enthusiastic figure skater as well as a prolific writer. It’s no surprise that many of his stories featured skating. The best are collected here.

These stories range from autobiographical accounts to clever parodies of society to chilling tales of horror. Many are set in the Swiss Alps, where the most enthusiastic English skaters, including Benson himself, often wintered. They show Benson’s full range of talents and give today’s reader a sense of what it was like to be a figure skater at the turn of the last century.