Novels set in Oxford (Book Guide): Gaudy Night, The Last Puritan, Brideshead Revisited, Northern Lights, To Say Nothing of the Dog

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Commentary (novels not included). Pages: 24. Chapters: Gaudy Night, The Last Puritan, Brideshead Revisited, Northern Lights, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Endymion Spring, Zuleika Dobson, Lyra's Oxford, The New Republic, Jill, Tom Brown at Oxford, Cripps the Carrier. Excerpt: The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel was written by the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. The novel is set largely in the fictional town of Great Falls, Connecticut; Boston; and England, in and around Oxford. It relates the life of Oliver Alden, the descendant of an old Boston family. Santayana wrote of the novel that "it gives the emotions of my experiences, and not my thoughts or experiences themselves." Alden's life demonstrates "the essential tragedy of the late-born Puritan." In the Prologue, Santayana explains that, "in Oliver puritanism worked itself out to its logical end. He convinced himself, on puritan grounds, that it was wrong to be a puritan." The tragic aspect is that in spite of his realization he maintained the character that was his cultural bequest. The novel took Santayana 45 years to complete and was a best-selling novel in 1936 (second only to Gone with the Wind). It was first published in 1935 by Constable Publishers in London. The 721 page novel was printed in Great Britain by Robert Maclehose and Co. Ltd. It was first published in the U.S. by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York. It was reprinted again in 1937 (this edition included a preface in which Santayana described the writing process and his philosophical intentions), 1940, and 1961. It was most recently published in 1994 as the fourth volume of The Works of George Santayana, a critical edition of the philosopher's writings published by MIT Press in Cambridge. The MIT edition is based on the original typescript, making the content true to Santayana's original in...