Peter Binney

It is over twenty years since “Peter Binney” was first published in England, and I should be unwilling to offer it to my American readers at this time of day without some plea for leniency towards a young man’s book, which contains perhaps more than the average number of crudities to be found in such beginnings. A few of the crudities I have been able to soften, but if you begin tampering with early work in the light of maturer knowledge, you are very apt to rub off the bloom that attaches to it just because it is early work, written with spirit and freshness, though with little skill. So I have left “Peter Binney” much as it was, with most of its imperfections on its head, and I trust some compensating merits.

One merit I know it to possess. It presents a picture of the lighter side of undergraduate life as it was in Oxford and Cambridge, and as it still exists, in spite of superficial changes; and that is something that can only be done by a young man, whose memories are still fresh, and to whom that life is still important enough to make it the basis of a story.

New York, July, 1921

Chapter 1. Mr. Binney Makes up His Mind
Chapter 2. Mr. Binney Interviews One Tutor and Engages Another
Chapter 3. Lucius Wins a Year’s Respite
Chapter 4. No Help to Be Gained From Mrs. Higginbotham
Chapter 5. Mr. Binney Arrives In Cambridge
Chapter 6. Lord Blathgowrie Has Something to Say
Chapter 7. Mr. Binney Speaks at the Union and Makes a Distinguished Acquaintance
Chapter 8. The Newnham Girl
Chapter 9. Me. Binney Gives a Dinner and Receives a Rebuff
Chapter 10. “The New Court Chronicle”
Chapter 11. “Put Him in the Fountain”
Chapter 12. Lucius Makes One Discovery and Mrs. Toller Another
Chapter 13. Mr. Binney Gets into Trouble
Chapter 14. Nemesis
Chapter 15. Lucius Finds a Backwater
Chapter 16. Third Trinity Makes a Bump
Chapter 17. Mr. Binney Drinks the Health of a “Blue”