Zuleika Dobson in Never too Late to Read Classics

Dec 12, 2013 Laura rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, mtbr-challenge-2013, british-literature, fiction-20th-century, read-2013, gutenberg

Reading online at DailyLit.

"Death cancels all engagements," in this morbidly funny satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. When a beautiful magician swears she can love no man susceptible to her charms she sets off a dangerous taste for suicide among the college boys.

Free download available at Project Gutenberg. ...more

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Apr 02, 2015 Sara rated it it was ok

Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson is a humorous satire, more in the vein of Oscar Wilde than Jonathan Swift. As the book proceeds from one ludicrous scenario to another, I felt less involved with the characters than with the pitiful realities that they are meant to deride. Beerbohm jabs at everything he touches, particularly the dandy and Oxford institutions, but he does it with a light and almost affectionate style.

I fail to see how anyone could find the character of Zuleika charming, but I am told th ...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Kate rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

:From the moment she set foot in Oxford to stay with her grandfather (Warden of Judas), the lovely Zuleika played havoc with the undergraduates -- and with non more than the Duke of Dorset, a character whom Ouida would have been pleased to invent. Max Beerbohm called this delicious novel of his 'An Oxford Love Story', and for fifty years it has delighted successive generations by its elegance and wit."
~~back cover

The book started out well enough. Mr. Beerbohm is nothing if not a master craftsman ...more

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