Summary of Zuleika Dobson
“Zuleika Dobson” is a comic – and at times farcical – novel about student life in Oxford at the start of the 20th century. It tells the story of Zuleika, an attractive young woman who enters the privileged, men-only world of Oxford University. There she meets the Duke of Dorset, a vain and aristocratic undergraduate. Though he falls in love with her, she rejects him, and, to his dismay, every other undergraduate in Oxford also becomes infatuated with her.
Reasons to read Zuleika Dobson
“Zuleika Dobson” is a light-hearted satire on university life in Oxford and aristocratic pretentions, and the only novel written by the English essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm. Modern Library included it in its 1998 list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Setting: Oxford (England, UK)
The fictional Judas College is thought to draw on Merton College, Beerbohm’s own alma mater.
Original title: Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story
Year of publication: 1911
Nr of pages: 288
