This book was so satisfyingly hilarious that I kept delaying finishing it, so that I would have it to read for another night. I may have also half suffocated while trying not to alarm my neighbours with screams of laughter late at night. It's a consummate satire, and I loved the fact that it satirises a lot of things I adore (coming-of-age Oxford stories, novels about society, dramatic Victorian novels). The humour in the story is mainly in the ludicrously overdramatic language, which alternates violently between extremes of emotion, as well as taking for granted certain improbable conventions of Victorian fiction and exaggerating them to the point of absurdity (such as characters reflecting about the possible pasts of people in portraits, Beerbohm has them actually appear as ghosts and shout at the people discussing them in the present day, then storm off when they realise no one can hear them). The story meanders around quite a bit, in fact the story isn't very inventive or very important or very witty, and it's really easy to ignore. It takes some detours into the world of ghosts, some into the world of servants, and one particularly hilarious detour in the world of the Greek gods. Beerbohm (or the narrator) claims to be 'a servant of Clio', then constructs a long story about his relationship with that Muse to explain his writing style, and there's a wonderful line about Zeus having 'not yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the lady of his choice', and he attempts to attract Clio by transforming into various novels and popular histories. The whole novel is utterly, delightfully bizarre, and I'm very sorry to discover that this is Beerbohm's only novel.
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