Zuleika Dobson
Or an Oxford Love Story. With a Foreword and Illustrations by Osbert Lancaster.
Max Beerbohm. (Shakespeare Head Press.) Oxford. 1975
Description: 475/750 COPIES signed by the artist, 2 colourprinted plates, reproductions of 5 pencil character sketches by Beerbohm within preliminaries, initial letter at the beginning of each chapter and the shoulder-titles printed in dark cerise, the title-page printed in black and cerise, pp. xvi, 190, sm.folio, original qtr. Oxford-blue morocco, gilt lettered backstrip with gilt blocked Lancaster drawing, ‘Bullingdon’ blue and white vertically striped board sides, t.e.g., blue cotton-marker, sunned board slipcase with Lancaster illustration and title, near fine
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That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line. Young and careless, in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, they struck a sharp note of incongruity with the worn boards they stood on, with the fading signals and grey eternal walls of that antique station, which, familiar to them and insignificant, does yet whisper to the tourist the last enchantments of the Middle Age.
-opening paragraph
