The Romance of His Life, and Other Romances

Mary Cholmondeley's 1909 collection opens with its most delicious target: the pompous academic whose romantic delusions become a comedy of errors. Maitland, a self-important professor, wanders through university corridors convinced of his own significance while those around him see him with perfect clarity. His interactions with colleagues and students create ripples of bemused exasperation, as he misinterprets every politeness as devotion and constructs elaborate romantic narratives from ordinary exchanges. The humor lives in his obliviousness and in the embarrassed silence of those forced to witness his self-regard. Cholmondeley, who earlier shocked Edwardian readers with 'Red Pottage,' here turns her sharp social eye toward the small tyrannies and tender absurdities of academic life. The surrounding tales continue this examination of romantic miscommunication and the quiet tragedies of desire, capturing an era when love and status were inextricable. For readers who appreciate period comedy and the particular pleasure of watching a fool believe his own press.