Zuleika Dobson or An Oxford Love Story.

BEERBOHM. MAX,.

$16,000.00

Item Number: 121225

London: William Heinemann, 1911.

First edition of Beerbohm’s classic and only novel. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in the rare original dust jacket, which is in very good condition. According to Mark Samuels Lasner, the Beerbohm scholar and bibliographer, there have only been five copies of this book identified as still possessing their original dust jackets. Two are in institutions, two have been in private hands. Laid in is an autographed letter signed by Max Beerbohm dated August 3, 1911, the publication of Zuleika Dobson. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery.

Zuleika Dobson largely employs a third-person narrator limited to the character of Zuleika, then shifting to that of the Duke, then halfway through the novel suddenly becoming a first-person narrator who claims inspiration from the Greek Muse Clio, with his all-seeing narrative perspective provided by Zeus. This allows the narrator to also see the ghosts of notable historical visitors to Oxford, who are present but otherwise invisible to the human characters at certain times in the novel, adding an element of the supernatural. Dr. Robert Mighall in his Afterword to the New Centenary Edition of Zuleika, writes: "Zuleika is of the future ... [Beerbohm] anticipates an all-too-familiar feature of the contemporary scene: the D-list talent afforded A-list media attention." Beerbohm began writing the book in 1898, finishing in 1910, with Heinemann publishing it 26 October 1911. He saw it not as a novel, but rather as "the work of a leisurely essayist amusing himself with a narrative idea."