Max Beerbohm

A satiric look at undergraduate life at Oxford recounts the humorous impact of a visit by Zuleika, a beautiful young woman, during Eights Week.

I offer here some of the essays that I have written in the course of the past ten years. While I was collecting them and (quite patiently) reading them again, I found that a few of them were in direct reference to the moments at which they were severally composed. It was clear that these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks...

This 1899 collection of humorous sketches includes "Some Words on Royalty," "Actors," "Madame Tussaud's," "Pretending," "An Infamous Brigade," "The Sea-Side in Winter," "Sign-Boards," "The Blight on the Music Halls," "Prangley Valley," "Fashion and Her Bicycle," "Going Back to School," "A Cloud of Pinafores," "At Covent Garden," and "The Case of Prometheus."