Zuleika Dobson

Originally published in 1911 Max Beerbohm's sparklingly wicked satire concerns the unlikely events that occur when a femme fatale briefly enters the supremely privileged all-male domain of Judas College Oxford. A conjurer by profession Zuleika Dobson can only love a man who is impervious to her considerable charms: a circumstance that proves fatal as any number of love-smitten suitors are driven to suicide by the damsel's rejection. Laced with memorable one-liners (Death cancels all engagements utters the first casualty) and inspired throughout by Beerbohm's rococo imagination this lyrical evocation of Edwardian undergraduate life at Oxford has according to Forster a beauty unattainable by serious literature.