Description
Pre-owned. Zuleika, the granddaughter of the warden of Judas College, is a female sleight-of-hand magician, a “prestidigitator”, renowned from New York to St Petersburg. She is also a femme fatale, a turn-of-the-century It girl and a minor celebrity. This fascinating young woman of extraordinary beauty arrives in Oxford, a privileged all-male academic society, and immediately devastates the student body, becoming first its icon and then its nemesis. Having fallen in love with Zuleika, the undergraduates, happy to die for what can never be theirs, plunge en masse into the Isis shouting “Zuleika”. But that is not the whole story. The Duke of Dorset, an absurdly accomplished peer – “He was fluent in all modern languages, had a very real talent in watercolour, and was accounted, by those who had had the privilege of hearing him, the best amateur pianist on this side of the Tweed” – and emotionally backward golden youth, has fallen in love with her, and she with him. But since Zuleika cannot commit to anyone remotely responsive to her charms, she rejects him – whereupon he, too, commits suicide, in full Garter regalia. With illustrations by the author, Max Beerbohm. Monogram for yellow binding by Vernon Shearer. With slipcase. In excellent condition. Published by The Folio Society 1966
