Novel
Zuleika Dobson
Max Beerbohm · 1911
Synopsis
Zuleika Dobson, a former governess turned music-hall conjuror, mediocre in her tricks and possessed of a beauty that turns heads, steps down from the train at Oxford one afternoon: her grandfather is head of one of the colleges and she has come to spend a week there. Within a day, all the undergraduates are in love with her. The Duke of Dorset, the most admired dandy of his generation, addresses neither a word nor a glance to her at dinner, and she thinks him indifferent. Yet she can love only a man who does not abase himself before her.
Context
The book appeared in 1911 and remained the only novel by its author, who had spent his life writing short: he had begun it in 1898 and finished it only twelve years later. Forster saw in it the spirit of farce. Its author covered his own copy with drawings and pasted cuttings, and this volume has been reproduced in facsimile. In 1954, a Cambridge students' club drew a musical comedy from it; after two years of setbacks, a London impresario acquired the rights and staged it in 1957.
Who it is for
About three hundred pages; translated into French as early as 1931 by Philippe Neel, the translation revised in 2010.
Prizes and reception
His only novel, ranked in 1998 fifty-ninth among the hundred best English-language novels of the century by the Modern Library.
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